


the nature of water is to find another path

by Aesoleucian



Series: The Nature of Water [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Animal Death, Gen, M/M, Multi, Politics, Tobirama has very little inherent self-worth or friendship skills, heads up this is pretty awful, this is also going to be AU but not for the first while
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-08-15 10:48:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 37
Words: 48,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8053411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: This is a story about how a cat drastically changed the course of history. This is a story about trying not to be human. This is a story about Senju Tobirama and his family.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT IS TIME  
> this is going to be at least 40k and I'm hoping to post once a week (peace sign emoji) let's have a great time

Tobirama does not have a cat, and never has. At barely fourteen, still restraining himself from picking at the peeling skin of his fresh tattoos, he has no time for a pet that can’t do the work of a shinobi. His father has finally given in and let him start learning to do the clan’s finances, since his brother obviously doesn’t have the head for it. It’s somewhere between aggravating and flattering that his destiny is to do the boring, difficult work that Hashirama insists he’s incapable of doing. On the one hand, he likes being better at something, and he likes mathematics. On the other, Hashirama will never notice the work he _doesn’t_ have to do, and Tobirama will not be thanked for what he does. That’s okay, mostly. The thanks he needs is that his clan won’t starve when his father finally dies.

Tobirama likes to sit in the reeds at the edge of the river with his abacus, his scrolls weighted down with rocks. It’s less stifling than sitting in his own room inside the compound, and he makes sure to choose a place far away from where Hashirama used to go. He hardly ever thinks of it, really—he hardly ever thinks of the way Hashirama and Madara were always touching. He’s _not_ thinking of it now.

Actually, he’s thinking of the cat he doesn’t have, who is crouching on a rock at the edge of the water, watching carp and frogs swim by. Her gray tail is twitching, and every so often her paw darts out at a flash of silver. Sometimes she seems to notice the pause in the clicking of the abacus beads and look back over her shoulder at Tobirama, as if daring him to mention her failure to catch anything.

“Do you only aim for the space between the fish?” he asks her when she comes over. He strokes her back and tail, and she tries to sit on the abacus. He moves it to the top of his leg, where she starts batting the beads back and forth. “I should call you Koima. You’ve never caught anything as long as I’ve seen you here.” And because he’s not entirely cold-hearted, he goes over to the rock she likes to sit on, and spears a small carp for her with his shortsword. He tries to ignore the noises she makes as she eats it, because they’re kind of disgusting and he has sums to do.

When it gets too dark to read his scrolls, he packs up and leaves. Koima follows him. Usually she gets bored halfway back to the village and turns back, but today she follows him all the way to his house. He nudges her away with his foot as she tries to get in the door.

“Did you make a friend while you were out?” asks Hashirama’s delighted voice from somewhere inside. “We should keep her! It would be nice to have a pet.”

Tobirama shuts her out and sits down to take off his sandals. “We’re not having a cat. I don’t want an animal to be dependent on me, given that I have a high risk of dying before I’m twenty.”

“Don’t say that, Tobirama! You’re _not_ going to die. And you’re the most responsible person I know, I bet you’d have five backups to take care of her if anything ever happened to you.”

“Father would have her killed.”

“He wouldn’t,” mumbles Hashirama, but he doesn’t sound certain. “Anyway, I made food since you were out so late. Don’t you ever think it’s dangerous to be out at sunset, all by yourself?”

Tobirama doesn’t say that Hashirama used to go out all by himself; he doesn’t say that he already knows it leads to trouble. Instead he sweeps Hashirama’s feet out from under him, flips him, and sits on him to twist his arms behind his back. “Yeah, I’m practically defenseless.”

“Let me up! You know what I mean. Ambushes aren’t always conveniently one person who you can easily find and knock them down.” He primly brushes the dust from his pants and marches off to the kitchen.

Because he is a responsible non-pet-owner, Tobirama does not save any leftovers for Koima, to keep from fostering any dependence. He doesn’t sneak away later to see if she’s still lurking outside the front door. Consequently, he doesn’t have to eat a chunk of eel that has been sitting out too long to hide the evidence, nor does he choke on his mouthful of eel when Touka says, “Hey, Tobi.” She pauses, leaning on one of the roof supports. “Uh, are you okay? Did you sneak outside to eat sweets?”

“There aren’t any sweets in our house,” Tobirama says, eyes streaming, once he’s managed to swallow his eel. “Father has forbidden them.”

“Right,” says Touka. “That’s why Hashi comes to _my_ house when he wants sweet buns. Anyway, I just got done with training for the day, and I want to show you this killer move I learned. C’mere.” Tobirama gets up off the porch, somewhat reluctantly because Touka’s moves are brutal, and she’s _much_ better at taijutsu than he is. “Okay, now come at me. I’ll just wait until you use something I can counter it with.”

“Can I use my shortsword?”

“Oh, I wish you would.” She grins wickedly. He’s going to have bruises tomorrow.

Still, he’s curious, so he darts to the left and tries to hit her side with the flat of his shortsword. She dodges and tries to get behind him, so he elbows her in the chin. She trips him, he rolls to his feet, and she breaks his grip on his shortsword, spinning him around by the wrist. But the world doesn’t stop spinning, and, unable to keep his balance, he falls to the ground.

“Kai!” she says above him.

He opens his eyes and sees that she’s extended a hand to help him to his feet. The stars are reassuringly static, so he takes her hand and gets up. “A combination of genjutsu and taijutsu? That’s innovative.”

She grins. “I thought you’d like it. I always think of you when I combine stuff that wasn’t meant to be combined.”

“What do you mean by _that_?” he asks, brushing the dirt off his clothes. “Everything I do, I mean to do.”

“Some of your ninjutsu is _weird_ , that’s all. Like the scalding water one. I don’t think it’s worth all the extra chakra to heat it up.”

“Then you don’t have to use it in battle. Oh—” He almost stumbles again when Koima, silent as only a cat can be, appears to wind herself around his legs. “ _You’re_ late.”

“Is this a ninja cat?” asks Touka with interest. “Why do you have an appointment with a ninja cat?”

He’s thankful that it’s too dark for her to see the dull flush he can feel on his cheeks. “No. Just a normal cat. Sometimes she keeps me company while I’m working on accounting for the clan.”

“You have a pet cat? Butsuma’s gonna make you eat it.”

“I do _not_ have a pet cat. She’s not mine, she’s wild.”

“Tobirama!” Hashirama whispers delightedly, peeking out through the door. “You liar! She _is_ your pet!” He steps out and crouches by Koima, who sniffs his hand warily. “She’s so cute! What’s her name?”

“Koima,” he mutters. “She’s really bad at fishing. But she’s not my pet. She just followed me home.”

“Then why did you sneak out here with your extra eel? Just saving it for a snack?”

Touka snorts, but doesn’t even say anything. Tobirama glares at her and walks around his brother and the cat. “I hope you both have fun. I’m going to sleep. Make sure she doesn’t get inside the house.”


	2. Chapter 2

In the end he ties a ribbon around Koima’s neck, because his cousin Gaoma can often be heard loudly saying that she could be an enemy cat sent to spy on them (he’s unsure whether Hashirama put Gaoma up to it). It seems useless to tell her to go away now; she follows Tobirama to and from the river and around the village, and he’s even managed to train her to deliver messages. So, no, he doesn’t have a cat. He has an associate who is a cat.

The first time he tells his brother this to shut him up, Hashirama laughs so hard that he doesn’t even seem to notice when Tobirama kicks him over. Tobirama stalks away to his favorite training ground and sits in a tree, trying to ignore Koima’s plaintive meowing until Ume arrives.

Ume is one of the three exchange shinobi from the Uzumaki clan—she is by far Tobirama’s favorite, although he’d never admit to liking anyone besides his brother, and that only reluctantly. Since she got here two months ago she’s been teaching him sealing, and he’s teaching her elemental nature transformations in exchange. It’s odd how they do things there—she said she’d never _had_ to learn nature transformations because no matter what it was they had a seal for it. The first time they trained together Tobirama had worn out all of his best techniques on her, and she matched every one of them with a seal that she either could use already or had heard about. She was equally confused to hear that the Senju clan doesn’t use seals for things like wind release.

“Tobirama-san?” she calls. “Stop hiding your chakra. It’s easy to tell which tree you’re in because Koima is staring at you.”

He jumps down next to the cat and gives her a quick glare. Unlike a dog, who would be devastated by a show of disapproval, she rubs herself against his legs, purring. “Go on,” he sighs, “get out of here. We’re training. You’ll get wet.” As if he’s said a banishment spell, she walks off into the undergrowth, tail waving jauntily. Well, he has said a banishment spell, in a way: the word _wet_. No wonder she never caught any fish.

“Hello, Ume-san. I trust you are well.”

“Well enough. Thanks to Yasha-san I have healed completely, so don’t hold back. I want to see if you can use seals in battle.” She smiles her strangely serene smile, and takes a defensive stance.

“Then you’ll have to hold back from using seals.” Tobirama pulls out his brush and takes a moment to draw some seals on his bare arms: two to convert his chakra to water and lightning, his best elements; one that will drain his opponent’s chakra on contact; and one that will reflect one or two ninjutsu.

“Drat,” she mutters.

“It will make you more flexible in real battles,” he tells her. “And it wouldn’t be much of a spar if we were both using seals. It would be over in thirty seconds. Are you ready?”

“GO!”

It will be to Tobirama’s advantage if he keeps the combat close; because it doesn’t take as many hand signs to activate a seal as to do chakra transformations, he can more easily use taijutsu. So he darts under her guard and goes for a palm strike that will drain her chakra.

She dodges and blows a stream of fire at him. He manages to avoid it, saving his mirror seal for later. He dodges a few more attacks on automatic, distracted by thoughts of a combined absorption/reflection seal. If he could take in his opponent’s elemental jutsu and use them later… He falls hard on his tailbone, unbalanced by a localized earthquake, and barely rolls out of the way in time to avoid Ume’s strike at a vital chakra point.

“How clumsy,” she says as she blocks a spinning kick, breathing out a cloud of steam. “Not like you, Tobirama.”

He activates his lightning seal and tries to loop a wire crackling with electricity around her arm. “I’m thinking. Is there a seal that lets you absorb attacks and release them again later?”

“There is,” she says, smiling, spinning away. “I’ll let you derive it after I defeat you.”

“It’s a combination of the drain seal and the mirror seal, right?” He blocks a strike and manages to tangle his charged wire around her wrist. With Ume trapped in close quarters, he activates his drain seal and punches her in the gut for his contact.

She groans in pain, but manages to yank the wire away from him and disengage. “It is,” she pants, shaking wire off her hand. “It has one more component to tie them together. And the function will change depending on the spatial arrangement of the components.”

“You only have a quarter of your chakra left,” Tobirama observes. “Do you want to stop the spar here?”

“It’s not over until it’s over,” says Ume. She takes advantage of the distance between them to form the hand seals for Tobirama’s water dragon—it’s not her affinity, so it takes him off guard, and even though he mostly dodges it slams him against a tree. At this point he really wishes he hadn’t used up his lightning seal, but it hardly matters now. His shoulder is aching where he hit the trunk of the tree, but she has almost no chakra left.

“That _is_ very impressive,” he says, “but showy techniques that take a lot of chakra aren’t usually the best choice in a real battle.”

Ume gets to her feet a little shakily. “I wanted to see if I could do that one when I was low on chakra. It could be useful one day.”

“This time, I think I win.”

“I wasn’t _trying_ to win,” she says. “I was testing my abilities and the limits of my chakra.” She’s even prouder than he is, but most of the time she hides it with her constant air of serenity. He thinks she might, very secretly, be a little bit petty. “Do you want to write your seal now?”

He retrieves a scroll from his bag, which he left up in the tree. The ground is muddy, so he uses a small fireball to dry it (he leaves a wet spot when he sits down, and so does Ume, but he’s not setting his clothing on fire trying to dry it off). First, he draws the mirror seal around the drain seal, connecting them with what the Uzumaki call ‘pins.’ He frowns at it, trying to intuit what it will do.

“Wrong,” says Ume. “You’re emphasizing the _vision_ aspect of the mirror seal and the _movement_ aspect of the drain seal. This is used to visualize the movement of chakra.”

“Why is there a seal for that?”

“Probably because someone was trying to invent the same seal you are, and made this by accident.” Tobirama smiles at the image of a scholarly Uzumaki testing out a seal only to find out that it does something completely different than intended. “And it’s quite useful for people who aren’t good sensors. Anyway, you need a more complicated way to link them than pins.”

“A link that indicates that the drain feeds into the mirror,” murmurs Tobirama. “It’s called a canal, right?”

“Correct. But make sure it flows the right way, or the result will be very strange.”

“It would… drain my chakra to give the reflection more power?”

She shakes her head. “It would drain the power of the reflection and dissipate it. That seal is more like a shield than a mirror.”

“How do you remember all this?” he asks, frowning at the scroll as he tries to figure out which orientation will give him what he wants.

“I grew up with it. It seems obvious to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Expositing on the exact mechanics of sealing is my hobby. Gosh do I love sealing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More sealing with Uzumaki Ume!

Koima sleeps curled into Tobirama’s side for a week while he’s healing from a gut wound he received courtesy of Uchiha Izuna. He doesn’t get bored, because he has plenty of accounting work and research to do, but he does get restless and frustrated. When that happens he scoops Koima onto his chest so he can bury his face in her fur and scream. She always huffs and sits up when he screams—it must feel strange—but then she resumes purring and touches her nose delicately to his. At these moments, he’s unspeakably grateful that he’s managed to make her seem useful enough that his father allows her in the house. At this point, Tobirama would probably admit that he has a cat, except to Touka. It’s been a year since he gave her that ribbon, after all.

Today, Hashirama is keeping him company, meditating on his own bed. Hashirama has been trying to learn to erase his presence, something Tobirama learned years ago, but his chakra is just so _loud_ that it’s slow going. Momentarily, Tobirama loses the flicker of his brother’s chakra, and looks up in surprise. “You had it for a second,” Tobirama says. “Whatever you did, it worked.”

Hashirama grins and opens his eyes. “Yes! It’s finally paying off! I’ll be able to ambush people by tomorrow!”

“You don’t even care for ambush tactics,” says Tobirama, looking up from his reading. “You always complain that it seems unfair, like that’s not the entire point of war.”

“It _is_ unfair,” Hashirama says, hunching his shoulders in a pout.

“Well, since you’re so excited to do it…”

He straightens up again. “Mostly I’m excited to ambush _you_. It’ll be sweet revenge for all the times you’ve done it to me. Oh, and Touka really deserves to be ambushed. And Ume, somehow she always knows when I’m coming…”

Tobirama rolls his eyes. “ _That’s_ because you start humming when you get within ten meters of her. On one occasion I think flowers actually started sprouting under your feet.” Ever since Hashirama learned to use wood release, it comes out at the oddest of times.

“She’s _so cool_ , Tobirama! She kicks my ass every time we spar!”

“Keep trying. I’m sure some day you’ll manage to stop getting lost in her eyes long enough to block a strike.” He falls silent for a moment, looking for his place in his scroll, and then frowns. “Did you know summoning is classified as a ‘space-time jutsu’? Where do you think time factors into that?”

“No idea,” says Hashirama “But we should make summoning contracts! Summoning nonliving objects is pretty cool, but what if you had wise magical summonses? They could teach you all sorts of things…”

“Maybe. But humans can also be summoned, can’t they? Ume-san told me a story once about her cousin who was summoned by the ospreys he contracted with.”

“Reverse summoning? That makes sense. If we can summon them they should be able to summon us too!”

“So there’s no reason a human couldn’t summon another human,” Tobirama concludes, rolling up the scroll.

“Well, you’d need a contract…”

“Could you summon yourself?”

“What would the point of that be!” Hashirama jumps to his feet and starts to stretch. “You’d just end up exactly where you started!”

“To a different location. You’d need some kind of medium, like a seal… Why am I bothering to discuss this with you? You don’t know anything about it. Can you ask Ume-san to come talk to me?”

“Any excuse to talk to Ume-chan is good enough for me! I’ll be right back!” And Hashirama runs for the door, barely remembering to get his sandals. He doesn’t even pout about the insult.

Ume hasn’t come to visit Tobirama while he’s recovering. No-one has, except Hashirama, to keep him company (and because they both sleep in the same room) and his father, to check on his progress. Tobirama specifically discourages people who try to make friends with him, which is why his only friends are training partners. It suits him fine.

Ume arrives a while later with a chattering Hashirama, who seems to be telling her about new techniques he’s inventing for wood release. She’s half paying attention, spinning a calligraphy brush around her ink-splattered fingers. She probably isn’t very interested in techniques she can’t learn.

“Tobirama-san,” she says, inclining her head. “I hope you are healing well. Hashirama-san said something incoherent about a new seal you wanted to create?”

Hashirama flushes and sits down on his own bed a meter away.

“You know the theory of summoning?” Tobirama asks. She nods. “It’s a manipulation of space that instantly brings an object or person to the summoner’s location.”

“It’s a manipulation of space _and_ time,” she corrects. “It affects the location of the object, but it also affects how long it takes to get there. Like you said: instantly.” Aha! That’s the missing element in ‘space-time.’

“We know that humans can be summoned, and presumably if you made the right kind of contract a human could summon another human.” When Ume nods, he continues, “Is there any reason you couldn’t make that contract with yourself, and use a summoning technique to move yourself?”

She frowns. “I can’t think of one. But you would summon yourself to the location of the summoner, which is where you already are.”

“That’s what I said,” mutters Hashirama, inconsequentially.

“Unless… you stored the power of summoning in a seal and activated it from a distance?”

“I would think of it more as activating the summoning from your location, and using the seal as a target,” says Tobirama. “You might need two seals, actually: a summoning seal and a target seal.”

Ume’s face lights up. “That would work! Lend me some ink. I want to try writing these.” She shifts Koima out of the way so she can lay a fresh scroll across Tobirama’s knees; the cat protests loudly but leaps over him to sit on his other side. “They would need to have a unique matching component to make targeting automatic. Pin that to a beacon… maybe arrow seal would be better for the summoning? But arrow seals are directional…”

“How is the information from a tracking beacon seal normally received?” asks Tobirama, peering at her work. It’s clear and elegant, even in her excitement.

“Just into your head. Ah, then you might just direct the information from your brain into the summoning seal, so you want a canal flowing from mind to center… That should work, as long as we have the matching component and matching chakra infusion.”

“Let me,” says Tobirama, holding out his hand for the brush. She gives it to him, reluctantly, and he draws his personal sigil in the center of each seal. Then he infuses a tiny amount of his chakra into each and cuts them apart. “Can you take this to the other side of the room?”

“You’re not going to move yourself out of bed, are you?” asks Hashirama. “You shouldn’t strain your injury.”

“I’ll do it, then,” says Ume, looking satisfied that she gets to test the new jutsu. She takes the seals, sets the target by Hashirama, and stands near the door to activate the summoning seal. There’s a small puff of steam, and the paper she’s holding vanishes and reappears on top of the target seal. Hashirama starts to laugh.

“The look on your faces!” he says. “You look like you just ate a live octopus each!”

Ume grimaces and comes over to Tobirama to get her brush back, and writes the summoning seal on her arm instead. This time when she activates it she is transported to the target—but she falls immediately to her knees and nearly faceplants onto Hashirama’s bed before he catches her by the shoulders.

“Ume-chan? Hey, are you all right?”

“It takes a lot more chakra than it should,” she mumbles, going limp in Hashirama’s arms. “That was a stupid idea.” When Tobirama looks, he can see that her chakra level has gone down to about a fifth of her normal. This technique takes over three times as much chakra as his water dragon.

Disappointed, he says, “There’s no good reason why it should need that much power. It’s probably inefficient. Can you lend me a list of seals so I can try to fix it?”

“Sure,” says Ume tiredly. “I’ll bring it to you after I take a nap.” She staggers to her feet, either not noticing that Hashirama is taking most of her weight or too dignified to mention it. “This has been very interesting. Thank you, Tobirama-san.”

He inclines his head. “Thank you for your help, Ume-san.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My opinion has always been that Hashirama is so straight he has no idea how bi he is. It doesn't really make logical sense but I feel it strongly. He's the straightest bi person I've ever seen.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters this week, because I just realized that if I post one chapter a week it'll take me about six months to catch up to where I've written now. This chapter has some murder and some talk of amputation.

Tobirama nudges his brother. “Hashirama,” he whispers. “Stay focused.”

Hashirama looks up from the leaf he’s pouring green-gold chakra into, surveying the road from his perch next to Tobirama, in the upper branches of a tree. “Everything seems fine. Honestly, I don’t think they’ll even show up. It’s not like we can predict which merchants they’ll try to target, or where.”

“Please consider strategy next time you start to say something like that,” says Tobirama under his breath. “This is the best place for an ambush.”

“Doesn’t that mean they wouldn’t choose it because it would be too obvious?”

“Shut up, Hashirama. I can feel their chakra signatures.”

Hashirama hunches down on his branch, wrapping his arms around one knee. “Sorry… I guess I’m a fool with no understanding of strategy…”

Tobirama doesn’t feel like playing his game right now. “Yes, you are. You need to work harder to be worthy of leading this clan when Father dies. Otherwise you’ll lead us to ruin.”

“Sorry…” Hashirama’s head sinks even lower, hiding his face in his pants.

“Focus. There’s nothing you can do about that right now. We have an ambush to thwart.”

Before long, Tobirama can pick out the sound of cart wheels and human voices coming down the road. The Uchiha chakra concealed in the bushes spikes and then calms. “Six of them,” Tobirama whispers. “Three on each side of the road. Can you locate the ones on this side to take them down?”

Hashirama squeezes his eyes shut in concentration, then nods and points at them. “I’ll get this side, you get the other. Scatter.”

Tobirama flickers silently to a tree on the other side of the road, directly above the Uchiha shinobi. Three kunai, one to the base of each skull, and they fall with the _swish, crunch_ of crushed ferns. Tobirama watches for their chakra to die out completely and then goes to retrieve his kunai. Across the road he can hear the sounds of hand-to-hand combat. Hashirama, the fool, is probably trying to give them a fighting chance. Tobirama sighs and targets the one trying to sneak up behind Hashirama, putting a knife into the chakra point in his eye. The other two quickly fall unconscious, and Tobirama joins his brother.

Hashirama is frowning down at the shinobi, and it’s easy to see why. One of them looks to be about thirteen. Tobirama draws his shortsword, and Hashirama looks around, apparently upset. “Don’t tell me you mean to kill them. They’re no threat to the merchants any more.”

“They’ll be trying to kill us on the battlefield in a week,” says Tobirama.

“This is someone’s _son_ , someone’s _little brother_. The battlefield will be hard enough for him.” Hashirama’s eyes are pleading, and Tobirama doesn’t fail to notice that he’s standing in front of the boy.

“He’s an Uchiha. He’s an enemy. Get out of the way.”

“I won’t. How are we ever supposed to make peace if you go around killing children?”

“Do you think we’ll survive long enough to make peace if we refuse to neutralize threats? If Father could see you…”

“He can’t! He’s not here, and I’m officially the mission commander, and I say we leave them. Don’t pretend you don’t have a heart, Tobirama, you cried as much as I did when Itama died. You tried to sneak food to a cat because she wasn’t good at hunting! Why can’t you care for humans that much?”

“I care for humans well enough when they’re not enemies,” says Tobirama coldly. The reminder of Itama’s death aches. Itama wasn’t much younger than this boy when a group of Uchiha—this boy’s kin—cornered him and slaughtered him. “I’m not willing to fight you over this, because I know you _will_ fight to the brink of unconsciousness to protect our _enemies_ , and I don’t want to waste resources and risk injury fighting you. If you really want to save this boy, though, cut off his foot. Then he won’t be sent to the battlefield. I’m going home to make my mission report.” He flickers away and begins to run toward the compound.

Almost an hour after Tobirama finishes making his report, he hears Hashirama slide open the front door and wonders what his brother could have been doing all this time. He’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, with Koima at his side; she licked the blood off his hands when he came home, though he’d thought he got it all off, and now she’s curled up asleep against his leg while he tries to modify the self-summoning seal. He thinks it takes so much chakra because it’s trying to move instead of letting itself _be moved_. It’s an abstract distinction, but he thinks it will make a real difference. At the moment he’s looking for magnet or gravity seals, although he has a nagging feeling that they’re too _heavy_ in some elusive way.

Hashirama walks into the doorway of their bedroom and stands there, eyes unfocused. He looks tired. “I’m going to be out for the rest of the night, training. So you’ll have to make dinner for yourself and Father.”

“Training alone?” asks Tobirama.

“Yeah. I won’t go far.”

“Take some food with you. It wouldn’t be the first time if you fainted halfway through an exercise.”

Hashirama scowls, mutters, “Yes, _sir_ ,” and leaves. Tobirama can hear him hunting for dried meat in the kitchen for a few minutes before he leaves again. He’s angry at Tobirama, still, for trying to protect the clan. In a way, Tobirama is looking forward to the day his brother finally gets the idealism beaten out of him by reality. In other ways, he doesn’t think he could stand it if Hashirama ever lost that part of himself.

He copies down hawk seal and mouse seal, even though their primary functions have to do with long-distance vision and hiding, respectively. If mercy on the battlefield were truly an efficient way to do things, wouldn’t shinobi have discovered it a long time ago? Then again, peace treaties are a hundred times more efficient than war, and it doesn’t seem like those have truly been discovered yet. Avalanche seal and valley seal might be useful. Or downward seal? He copies all three.

A shinobi doesn’t let emotions get in the way—doesn’t even _have_ emotions. A shinobi certainly doesn’t feel guilt when he didn’t even kill the boy. Tobirama doesn’t have emotions like guilt. Next to magnet seal and iron seal, there’s lightning rod. Lightning and lightning rod, that’s a good one to try. It’s fast enough and powerful enough, and it contains that element of _seeking_. Tobirama is perfectly focused on his work. He won’t be distracted by the emotions he doesn’t have.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Tobirama, a 15-year-old kid, gets beaten by his father and decapitates his cat. I'm sorry for everything but especially to Koima and Tobirama.

When winter comes, Koima get sick. Tobirama doesn’t know what’s wrong with her, but she shivers all the time and has trouble keeping down food. He chews her fish for her and warms her water—it helps a little, but her shaking is starting to make it hard for her to walk. Even though he knows it’s more important than ever, he starts cutting into his training time to make her more comfortable.

His father walks in on him trying to use healing chakra on her, probing her side for problems with her organs. “Why are you wasting time and chakra on this?” he asks, standing over Tobirama. Tobirama looks up and lets the chakra around his hands fade, but he can’t think of any answer his father will accept. He’s not doing it for any reason a perfect shinobi would recognize.

His father snorts in disgust. “Just kill the creature. You’ve spent too many of our resources on it already, and it was barely useful to begin with.”

Tobirama nods mechanically, and gets up to retrieve his shortsword. He picks Koima up by the scruff of her neck and goes outside. But then he looks down at her shivering even in her forced stillness, and shifts her into his arms. And he takes the long way around the edge of the village to Touka’s house.

She’s meditating when he slips in through the door of her room, but she opens one eye in irritation. “What is it, Tobi?” Then she sees Koima and frowns. “Is she okay?”

“No. I’ve been spending too much time taking care of her, and Father—”

He doesn’t need to say more, because Touka’s troubled frown deepens into anger. “You work harder than any single person in the clan. He has no right to say you’re putting too much time into helping your cat. I’ll take care of her for you.”

“Don’t let her out of the house,” he says, trying to ease some of the tension out of his back. “It’s cold, and I’m supposed to have killed her.” He gently sets Koima down on Touka’s bed, and Touka strokes her back, still scowling. “I need to go train now.”

He puts it out of his mind as he does his exercises, trying to achieve the trancelike state that lets his mind relax.

But when he gets home he finds Touka on her knees in the mud, cursing and peering under the porch of his house. She looks around when she hears him approach. “Fuck—I thought you were Butsuma. She won’t come out from under here.”

“I told you to keep her inside your house,” says Tobirama, crouching next to her.

“I’m a busy woman, and I have shit to do besides watch your cat. I didn’t think she’d get this far.”

“Come here, Koima.” He stretches out his hand to her, and she lurches toward him, tail trembling but held high. He picks her up and passes her to Touka. “This time, make _sure_ she stays inside.”

“Don’t take another step.” Tobirama’s father strides toward them, mouth compressed into a thin line. “Not only is my son deceiving me for the sake of this worthless animal, but I find my cousin abetting him. What is the meaning of this, Tobirama?”

Tobirama gets down on hands and knees to bow penitently. “I have no excuse, Father.”

“That’s right.” He grabs the collar of Tobirama’s shirt and pulls him to his feet. “You have been disobedient, you have wasted the clan’s time and resources, and you have lied to me.” He backhands Tobirama across the face, making him stagger.

Tobirama is silent. Although he could easily overpower his father, he will take his punishment because it is what he deserves for his faults as a shinobi. He takes a blow to the gut, and two on his back, falling to his knees again. His father’s foot presses him down until his forehead rests in the mud.

“I will kill—it, Father. You can watch this time.”

“Good. Stand up.”

He does, and takes Koima back from Touka. He carries her around the house, to the back, sets her on a tree stump, and draws his shortsword. _I’m sorry, Koima,_ he says silently. He can’t even stroke her one last time for comfort. All he can give her is a painless death. He raises the sword, and cleanly severs her head, with the dull, final _thud_ of the blade biting into wet wood.

His father leaves without another word, and Tobirama sinks to his knees beside her tiny head. Blood is soaking into the cracks in the stump. He digs a tiny grave next to it with earth release, and sets her body, and then her head, inside. He doesn’t dare to mark it, and he can’t stay for too long.

So he gets to his feet and walks into the forest until the light dwindles from the sky. Then he sits with his back against a tree, letting the mud soak into his pants until he is as cold and stiff as the sleeping trees around him.

Moonlight is filtering through the clouds by the time Hashirama finds him. He’s in a stupor, almost asleep, staring at the wet leaves plastered to the ground, and the shortsword he still hasn’t cleaned lies by his side.

“Little brother?” says Hashirama. His voice sounds flat and quiet among the bare trees. “What happened?”

Tobirama says nothing. There are no thoughts in his head. He doesn’t quite remember what Hashirama could be talking about, and that’s how he wants it.

“Touka told me Koima died.”

He lets the words slide over his mind without sinking in.

“Brother, I’m worried about you! Say something, or at least look at me!” Tobirama turns his empty stare toward his brother. Hashirama looks miserable, worried and afraid. “Oh, Tobirama.” He kneels by Tobirama’s side and wraps his arms around him, shoulder-length hair brushing against Tobirama’s face.

“It’s fine,” says Tobirama. “It doesn’t really matter. We should probably get home.” He pushes Hashirama away and stands, walks back in the direction he came from. Behind him, Hashirama hesitates, picks up his shortsword, and follows.

It’s nearly dawn by the time they make it back to the village. Tobirama hasn’t eaten anything, but he feels that he probably deserves the hollow ache in his stomach. Tomorrow, of course, he will have to eat, because it is his duty as a shinobi to be strong and healthy for his clan. Tomorrow, he will do his sword exercises and he will perfect the self-summoning seal. Tomorrow, he probably won’t be able to stop himself from thinking about a technique that will bring back the dead.

Tonight, he lies in his bed as still as a corpse, and doesn’t sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tobirama is traumatized and thinks some rude thoughts.

Hashirama keeps trying to comfort him, which is extremely annoying. Not only does it actually make him feel slightly worse, but it’s none of Hashirama’s business anyway ( _if Hashirama had been there it might not have happened_ ). Ume just avoids him because she doesn’t know how to deal with human emotions any better than he does, and Touka punches him whenever she sees him. She also keeps finding him to spar, which he appreciates. It’s good to have a warm body, a distraction, a reminder to keep getting stronger.

His new stony façade sets for the rest of the winter, and he finds himself comforted. He won’t be tempted again to do the kinds of things that make him weak. By spring, almost everyone has stopped trying to talk to him unless they need something. His life is silent and still, when it’s not metal and blood and screams. And he finds himself comforted.

When spring comes, so does Uzumaki Mito, princess of the Isle of Whirlpools. She’s here to strengthen the ties between their two clans, which Tobirama takes to mean she’s going to marry someone. He wishes he could afford not to care, but it could have financial implications. And there’s a one out of two chance he’ll have to marry her.

Not that she’s objectionable; she arrives in pristine blue and white, controlled and elegant, the very picture of a diplomat who could double as an assassin on a moment’s notice. She also wears a seal on her forehead that Tobirama recognizes as _the strength of one hundred_ , a mark of perfect chakra control. Hashirama is immediately starstruck; he stammers when he introduces himself and nearly pronounces his own name wrong. As second son, Tobirama is next. He gives her his name and a short bow and nothing else.

She dines with their family that night—Tobirama and his brother have been working all day in the kitchen with their grandmother, and their father’s siblings all join them for the meal. Mito leaves late to return to the house where the other Uzumaki shinobi are staying, and Hashirama keeps his brother awake past midnight with his speculation about how powerful she must be. Among other things.

He gets a chance to spar with her later that week. He’s impressed by her taijutsu—obviously augmented with chakra—and her kenjutsu, particularly her use of the straight pins in her hair. In a purely physical fight, she easily beats him, but she doesn’t use ninjutsu or fuuinjutsu in battle. When he asks why, she says, “I don’t expect to be fighting shinobi. However, if I must, I don’t think I’ll need ninjutsu anyway.” And she proceeds to demonstrate that even the Senju prodigy, second clan heir Tobirama, can’t touch her with ninjutsu.

For the first time in months Tobirama smiles (just a bit, practically a grimace) as he clasps her hand at the end of the spar. “It has been an honor, Uzumaki-san,” he says. “I would be pleased to train with you again.”

She smiles back, polite but genuine. “I hope we are able to learn much from each other, Senju-san.”

She still has enough chakra afterward to go up against Hashirama. Now that he’s watching from the outside, he can see her style more clearly. She evades with the minimum necessary movement, and she knows how to force her opponent to dodge to a location _she_ chooses. Even Hashirama’s wood dragons have difficulty catching her—and when they do, she sets the one holding her on fire.

“I thought you didn’t use ninjutsu!” says Hashirama plaintively, looking much more offended than is warranted. He still has plenty of chakra left for another attack.

Mito gives him a satisfied smile, eyes downcast. “I said I don’t usually need it.” She carelessly brushes some ash off of her training clothes—uselessly, because they’re white and completely ruined now—and says, “You’re a better opponent than I usually face. I didn’t need ninjutsu against your brother.”

After that Hashirama starts an all-comers competition to see if any of the watching Senju can take him one-on-one. It’s partially so he can show off for Mito, but he also genuinely loves this sort of thing. Tobirama leaves, because he’s seen all these fights dozens of times before and he has better things to do.

In order to use the self-summoning seal (renamed hiraishin for its lightning seals) in battle, he needs to improve his own reaction times. He’s never moved as fast as he now can with hiraishin, and it’s disorienting to find himself suddenly in a different place with the same momentum. And so: target practice.

To his surprise, Mito joins him not half an hour later, watching his training with interest. After a while he pauses to look at her questioningly.

“I thought it would be interesting to watch both your practice and your brother’s,” she says. “What is the technique you’re using?”

He throws one of his marked kunai at the tree she’s standing next to, teleports, and catches it before it hits. He gives it to her so she can inspect the seal on the handle, and then pulls the collar of his shirt open to show her the matching tattoo on his back. “It’s a self-summoning technique Ume and I invented,” he says. “When the summoning seal on the user is activated, it’s drawn toward the target like a lightning rod.”

“You created this?” She sounds impressed. “Do you invent many new techniques?”

Very occasionally, Tobirama allows himself to brag. This seems like one of the few appropriate times for it. “Probably my most well-known is the shadow clone technique—” He can see that she’s heard of it from the way her eyes widen “—but I’ve created dozens of water release techniques, a few genjutsu, several new seals, mostly barrier seals, and… various other things. I have a list, if you really want to know.” 

“The shadow clone technique is already in use even in the Land of Earth,” she says. “When did you create it?”

“When I was nine, seven years ago. I suppose a useful technique like that spreads quickly, though.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You don’t _seem_ like you’re four years younger than me. I thought you were just short.”

He looks at her flatly, unwilling to dignify that with a reply.

She covers her mouth with one hand, probably hiding a smile. “You’re much more serious than your brother.”

“Someone has to be.”

She waits for a moment, then seems to decide that he’s not going to say anything else, and bows. “Thank you for your time, Senju-san, and for letting me observe your training.” And she goes back along the path to the village.

Tobirama hopes she’ll get married to Hashirama as soon as possible, so this can be over with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How does Mito know what people are doing in the Land of Earth? I suppose she must be very well-travelled, being a princess and all.
> 
> Okay after some deliberation I decided the end notes are the best place to put this picture of Tobirama:
> 
>  
> 
> And yes, he IS pretty beefy for a 16-year-old. He works out a lot, obviously, but he's also naturally kind of wide. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> decapitation in this one?? and like stabbings

She keeps bothering him. She always has a good reason: if she’s going to be married to a clan head or heir she needs to understand their finances; she wants to understand his innovative use of seals; Hashirama won’t spar seriously with her today. It’s tiresome because Tobirama has spent the last three months (the last ten years) cultivating the mindset he needs to work efficiently, alone and in silence. Not that he talks to her much even when she is hovering. She’s nosy, a perfect match for his brother. Once, he hears her ask Hashirama in a whisper, “What’s wrong with Tobirama?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my brother,” Hashirama tells her. “He’s doing his best to support the clan.” Tobirama feels somehow vindicated, pleased that Hashirama is taking his side against Mito.

He starts going to the river again to work in peace, but it makes him think of Koima. It’s too easy to believe she’ll wander through the reeds at any moment, and start trying to catch frogs from her favorite rock. He moves to a different spot, where the reeds are just as tall and the water sparkles just as brightly, but it’s empty.

It suits him fine. It’s easier to work when his heart is empty.

He takes care of the village, and he grows stronger, and he creates new weapons, and he uses them to kill. It’s simple.

Then his father dies in battle.

Tobirama nearly saves him, but he’s just a bit too slow, even with hiraishin. After decades of fighting, Uchiha Tajima gets lucky and runs him through with a sword that crackles with lightning. Tobirama strikes down Tajima in the next instant, while he’s distracted, but a wound like his father has won’t be healed before he bleeds out.

So Tobirama kneels by him and doesn’t waste his chakra on healing.

“I leave the clan to your brother,” his father wheezes. “He’s an idiot, so take care of him. Make the clan strong.”

“I will, Father,” says Tobirama, dry-eyed. “Is there anything you want me to tell everyone?”

“I’ve said what I wanted to say.” He sucks in a pained breath. “Is a mercy kill too much to ask? This hurts… like nothing else.”

Tobirama nods, and uses a carefully-timed shock to stop his father’s heart. He kills the Uchiha trying to sneak up on him, seals his father’s body in a scroll, and draws his sword again to fight his way to Hashirama.

“Father is dead,” he says in Hashirama’s ear. “You now command all of our forces. I’ve also killed Uchiha Tajima.”

Hashirama looks stricken, although as far as Tobirama can tell he never much liked their father. But he knows how morale works, so he roars, “UCHIHA TAJIMA IS DEAD! KILLED BY OUR OWN TOBIRAMA! DRIVE THEM BACK!”

And the battle turns into a rout.

At their father’s funeral the following morning, half the attendees are still wearing battle gear, and nearly as many are injured in some way. Afterward, they hold the customary ceremony to honor those lost and presumed lost in battle. Tobirama didn’t know any of them well, but he mourns as best he can. The one person he will let himself care about is safe.

Hashirama makes a speech about how he will do his best to protect and strengthen their clan. Later, Tobirama is sure, when the period of mourning is over, he will make another speech emphasizing the practicality of diplomacy. Now that he has real power, his first act will be to ban children from fighting, and his second will be to offer a peace treaty to the Uchiha. It’s exactly what Tobirama would do, if he thought the Uchiha would accept—or rather, if he thought Uchiha Madara would accept. When Hashirama sends him a messenger, Tobirama is confident that Madara will call for unconditional surrender, or send back a severed head, or both.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happens.

Hashirama frowns at their cousin Ashima’s head, which he holds on his lap despite the fact that it is still slowly oozing. A note is pinned into his eye socket, barely legible, soaked as it is with blood and the humors from his burst eye. It reads: _Do not demean the Uchiha with a demand for surrender._

“That idiot,” Hashirama murmurs, stroking Ashima’s grey cheek. “He knows I’m not asking for his surrender.”

“So? What will you do?” asks Tobirama, at his brother’s shoulder.

Hashirama sighs. “I’ll keep fighting, of course. If they attack, we have to be prepared so we won’t lose more people than we can help. I have half a mind to walk over to the Uchiha compound and confront him about this myself, though.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” says Mito forcefully.

“If you’re set on committing suicide,” says Tobirama, “I’ll be forced to stop you. I’m not qualified to lead the clan.”

“I am,” says Mito, “but I’d have to marry Tobirama before they’d let me, and no-one wants that.” Tobirama snorts, and Mito’s chakra flares pleased.

Hashirama gives them a tired half-smile, and gets up. “Don’t worry. I won’t put anyone else in danger to talk to Madara. For now, I’ll focus on strengthening our alliances with friendly clans. Mito…?”

“How romantic,” comments Mito, looking faintly amused. “Yes, I’ll marry you. But we are _not_ having children until this war ends.”

“The Senju clan needs heirs—” Tobirama starts, but she waves her hand imperiously at him.

“And it will have them. I’m confident that Hashirama and I will find a way to secure peace in the next ten years.”

Now that he thinks of it, Tobirama would make that bet too. Their father never truly tried to make war obsolete—he thought it honorable and proper to be at war. He was a fool, and although Hashirama is too he’s a very different kind of fool. “Very well,” he says. “And what are your plans for our other alliances?”

The three of them stay up past midnight in Tobirama and Hashirama’s room, making plans. Over the course of two hours Hashirama slumps from a sitting position onto his belly, while Tobirama and Mito keep their perfect posture intact. His back is tired from sitting up straight for so long, but they finally have a solid plan for the next few months—although work wasn’t all they did. Hashirama and Mito even managed to engage Tobirama in some rather unprofessional speculation on the personal lives of other clan heads, which he regrets now because Mito seems to have decided that he’s _an all-right guy_ and dragged Hashirama’s bed next to Tobirama’s so she can sleep halfway on each of them.

“Don’t you think it’s time we got our own rooms?” asks Tobirama of his dozing brother. “You’ve been clan head for almost a month.”

“I won’ stop you if you wanna move your stuff,” Hashirama mumbles into his pillow. “I’d kinda miss you, though.”

Tobirama, propped up on one elbow, sighs. His fondness is heavily concealed, but Mito, who he thought was asleep, cracks open one eye to smile slyly at him. “What is it, Mito-san.”

“Nothing. You two are just cute.”

“I’m not cute!” protests Hashirama sleepily. His assertion is undermined by the fact that he’s _incredibly_ cute when he’s sleepy. Tobirama would rather be tortured by the Uchiha than admit it, but somehow Mito can tell anyway. When she throws an arm over his chest and shoulder, he removes it and drops it back at her side. He closes his eyes and says, “Go to sleep, Mito-san.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what is Madara's PROBLEM I seriously do not know, I don't understand his psyche


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this one is just a wedding, but Tobirama doesn't go to it. Touka is a surprisingly nice cousin.

Mito and Hashirama are married within the month. They invite the heads of a dozen nearby clans and their families, including the Uchiha. Hashirama, of course, didn’t tell anyone he was sending a hawk to Madara until it came back with an angry reply that he paraphrased as _We’re not friends and I’ll kill you the next time I see you_. As Mito tells Tobirama, she is really starting to dislike Madara.

Mito and Hashirama are not in love, but they are still radiantly happy on their wedding day. Hashirama loves the attention, Mito loves celebrations and opportunities to be visibly elegant, and they both love creating peace. Tobirama stays as long as he must for politeness, and then leaves to get some work done while the room he still shares with Hashirama is quiet.

He looks up after what must have been at least an hour to find Touka sitting on Hashirama’s bed, studying a scroll of her own and drinking tea out of Tobirama’s cup. He has no idea how long she’s been there, but the tea is no longer steaming. When she sees he’s noticed her, she smiles pleasantly and says, “I thought you were supposed to be the most paranoid of all Senju. Or if not that, at the very least a sensor specialist.”

“Inside the compound, I find it more productive to focus my attention on other things,” he murmurs. He picks up the cup, because it does after all belong to him, and drinks some of her tea. It isn’t very good, cold and slightly too strong. “What are you doing in my house that you couldn’t knock?”

“I didn’t want to disturb you. Just came to see how you were doing, since you skipped out on the wedding. You’re missing some really good food, you know.”

“I don’t like parties. Either people try to talk to me and then realize I don’t _converse_ and it’s horribly awkward, or people don’t try to talk to me and I stand there for an hour watching everyone else talking.”

“You lead such a sad life,” says Touka. “You should talk to some of the people from the other clans! Who knows, you might find someone as joyless as you and then you can marry them to further your political goals, and sit in stern silence every night reading.”

“Do you think that I enjoy being dour for the sake of being dour?”

“Yes? Have you met yourself?”

He does, a little bit, but he’s never going to tell her that. There’s something rather satisfying about watching people flounder when he doesn’t give them the expected social cues, and eventually give up. He’s a wall that no-one has yet managed to climb. “In any case, I see that you’ve deserted the wedding, too. Could you not find any warriors from other clans to regale with stories of your battles?”

“Tobirama,” she says, “you really are as dumb as a sack of rocks.” She rolls up her scroll and gets to her feet, stretching. “Do you want me to steal any food for you?”

“If there’s any sashimi left…”

“Love you, cousin.” She smiles as she leaves.

 _Love you, cousin_. He’s almost annoyed at that. He doesn’t talk to her or spend time with her outside of sparring. She shouldn’t really have any emotional connection to him any more. He considers shutting her out so she’ll stop caring… but he remembers how much he used to enjoy spending time with Ume, before. No. Let people leave him if they want to, but he won’t spend energy to push them away.

He works for the rest of the night (with a brief pause for sashimi and Touka’s party gossip), until Hashirama and Mito return. They’re both drunk, leaning on each other, Hashirama with a huge grin and Mito looking smug.

“Brotherrrr,” says Hashirama, trying to lie down on Tobirama’s lap regardless of the scroll already occupying it. “Don’t tell me you’ve been sitting in our room for hours while there was a party going on outside.”

Tobirama moves the scroll, because he won’t be getting any more work done tonight, and Hashirama settles happily in his lap. “I won’t tell you, then. It seems you two had fun.”

“We did,” says Mito. She sits down with impressive grace, given how inebriated she is, but immediately sprawls onto her back. “The head of the Shimura clan may be about sixty, but you would not believe the kind of dancing he does.” And she actually _giggles_. Tobirama does not like drunk Mito at all. “Someone said we should have a tournament, so Hashirama entered, but it was no-ninjutsu and he was already tipsy and Nara Shikamune defeated him in about two minutes.”

“Don’t tell him that,” says Hashirama, his voice muffled by Tobirama’s knee. “He has to look up to his older brother. I’m like a _shining_ example of everything Tobirama aspires to be.” Even drunk he makes pretty speeches, if not coherent or true ones.

“In many areas, I have already surpassed you,” he says. “Seeing as you have lost to me many times, it would be ridiculous for me to lose respect for you because you were defeated in kenjutsu by a kenjutsu master.”

“So you still look up to me? I’m still your cool big brother?”

Tobirama hasn’t looked up to Hashirama in about ten years, as such. “I see you as a respected equal,” he says. Hashirama rolls off his lap to lie face-down on Mito’s bed. “I can _feel_ you pouting,” Tobirama tells him, annoyed. “Your chakra changes from gold to purple. You really are ridiculous.”

“You think my chakra’s beautiful?” asks Hashirama, rolling over again to look at him hopefully.

“Go to sleep, brother. You’re drunk and I’m tired of your stupid questions.”

Hashirama and Mito fall asleep curled into each other, and Tobirama tries not to dislike them for it. He partially succeeds.


	9. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit is finally getting real (canon divergent)

Tobirama does not have a cat, although he did once. At barely seventeen, for all intents and purposes the logistical and financial head of his clan, he has no time for a pet that can’t do the work of a shinobi.

But there is a cat who keeps finding him: feral rather than wild, and always covered in mud when he comes to watch Tobirama working on the back porch. He crouches at the edge of the pond, completely ignoring the fish and frogs, his eyes instead following Tobirama’s brush and the click of the abacus beads. When he comes two days in a row, Tobirama moves to work by the river instead, but the cat quickly finds him again. Every day he sits a little closer, because Tobirama entirely ignores him, until he finally puts a paw on Tobirama’s leg.

Tobirama taps his paw with the wooden end of his brush, and he withdraws it, but continues watching. When Tobirama starts writing again, he puts his paw on Tobirama’s leg again. Tobirama picks him up by the scruff of his neck and tosses him a little distance away. He eyes Tobirama reproachfully and slinks into the bushes to continue watching.

Tobirama doesn’t really know how to _not_ have a cat. He isn’t capable of the cruelty required to scare one away for good. He sighs, because there’s no longer any reason he _can’t_ , either. Hashirama will be accepting to the point of solicitousness, unlike their father. Actually, maybe _that_ is a good reason not to adopt this muddy animal. He hates it when Hashirama meddles in his business.

In the end, he gives in when he finds the cat purposefully rolling in a patch of mud at the bottom of a ditch. “You’re disgusting,” he tells the cat, who jumps up and runs to him. “No wonder you’re always covered in mud. You _like_ being dirty, Mizoma.” The newly named Mizoma rubs his head against Tobirama’s leg, smearing mud all over his pants. Tobirama sighs. “All right, you awful creature. But you’re not coming into the house until you’re clean.”

Unlike Koima, who preferred to stay at home napping, Mizoma follows Tobirama everywhere. More than once he spots the cat on an actual battlefield, leaping over corpses to get closer to Tobirama, barely avoiding being stepped on. Afterward, when Tobirama carries him back, the blood on his paws doesn’t matter because Tobirama is already so covered in it. Until they get home, and Tobirama threatens to wash his paws in water unless he cleans them himself.

Hashirama is predictably delighted. The first time he sees Mizoma with a gray ribbon around his neck, he picks Tobirama up and spins him around. “I always knew you’d find someone,” he says. His smile isn’t a teasing grin, as it usually is. Tobirama can feel the love radiating off him, almost palpable in the way chakra signatures are. So he tells Hashirama to shut up and help him make lunch.

Mito likes the cat too, and seems to enjoy letting him sleep on her lap. Much worse, Hashirama tells Touka, so that the next time she sees Tobirama she smiles her smuggest smile at him and punches him _very_ hard in the arm. She personally prefers dogs, but whenever Mizoma comes to stare at her she ruffles his ears and starts whispering what Tobirama assumes are insults about himself.

When he’s walking through the forest, Mizoma likes to alternate between riding on his shoulder and running ahead. Tobirama usually indulges him, but today he’s running directly toward an unpleasantly familiar chakra signature that definitely shouldn’t be in these woods. Tobirama flickers to a tree nearby to watch cautiously as Uchiha Izuna, lying on the ground and clearly in pain, offers his hand for Mizoma to sniff.

Izuna is injured; the last patrol to report in said they’d let him get away. He must be trying to get back across the river, but by his position he’s failing. He has been doing a very good job of masking his chakra signature, weak and low on chakra as he is, because Tobirama didn’t sense him until they were almost right on top of him. He’s an easy target, and killing him will end the war sooner than letting him live.

“Hey, kitty,” says Izuna, stroking Mizoma’s ears. “Who do you belong to? Did you run away from home?” He grits his teeth on a pained noise as he tries to shift his weight and puts too much pressure on his injured leg. “You should stay for a little while so I can forget how much this hurts, huh?”

Tobirama _should_ kill Izuna right here. Or should he? If Madara finds out, it will destroy any chance of an alliance with the Uchiha. If Izuna dies at all, it will probably destroy any chance of an alliance, although that chance is already vanishingly low. And as irritating as it is to admit, it’s hard to kill a man who’s wasting the precious time he has to escape on petting a cat.

He takes his hand off his shortsword and walks out into the clearing.

Izuna’s eyes widen, and he almost tries to push himself backward, except that both of his arms are occupied holding Mizoma, and he barely keeps himself upright. “Fuck. Please don’t kill me while I’m holding a cat. Ideally you wouldn’t kill me at all but I’m not optimistic.”

Without speaking, Tobirama crouches and puts his hands on Izuna’s injured leg to feel for the wound. Several of Izuna’s tendons have been severed, and he’s still bleeding sluggishly. Tobirama has no idea how he managed to get this far.

When green healing chakra surrounds his hands, Izuna shuts his mouth on a pained cry. After taking a moment to settle his breathing he says, “Who are you, and why are you disguised as Senju Tobirama?”

“It would be fairly unproductive to disguise myself as myself,” says Tobirama, not looking up. Mizoma is purring. He hates himself a little bit. He can almost hear his father’s voice cursing him.

No doubt he would have had Mizoma killed too. Let him curse.

“That’s not incredibly convincing,” says Izuna, but he’s starting to relax now that he believes that Tobirama is someone else.

It’s irritating, somehow, that Izuna doesn’t believe him. “The last time we fought, you’d forgotten to do one of the ties on your breastplate and you desperately needed to pee.”

Izuna flushes. “There’s no way you could know that even if you are Tobirama.”

“I’m a sensor specialist,” says Tobirama. “I can tell from your chakra how long it’s been since you ate—about a day and a half. You really should learn the basics of healing, because then you would never be stuck in enemy territory, unable to walk. Most Senju know at least a little healing, and your chakra control is good enough.”

“I’m being lectured on precautions to make sure I don’t get killed by the man who tries to kill me every time I see him. Maybe I’m hallucinating.”

“Make sure to hallucinate that you make it back to the Uchiha compound, because if I find out I wasted all this chakra I’m going to be _vexed_.”

“Are you _really_ the heartless killer of the Senju clan? The Blue Flash? The Water Dragon of the South?”

“No-one calls me the Water Dragon of the South,” says Tobirama, disgusted. “That’s a ridiculous name.”

“No, they don’t. We used to use that name to frighten children when they weren’t training hard enough.” Izuna pauses, frowning. If he’s anything like Tobirama, he’s realizing how horrifying it is to send children to (potentially) fight Tobirama. But Tobirama noticed when suddenly he stopped seeing Uchiha younger than fifteen. It seems that Madara still shares some ideals with Hashirama.

“There,” he says. “It should work now. Put Mizoma down and try standing up.”

When Izuna releases him, Mizoma almost immediately jumps up onto Tobirama’s shoulders. Izuna slides backward until he can brace himself on a tree trunk and get to his feet. “Thank you.” His mouth twists as he stands fully upright. “Are you still going to try to kill me next time we meet on the battlefield?”

“I see no need to kill anyone who isn’t threatening my clan,” says Tobirama. He turns away, but pauses, struck by a thought. “Technically, I am a traitor to my clan, so I won’t be spreading the word about this. But if you tell your brother…”

“I’ll see what I can do,” says Izuna, and he flickers away toward the river.

Tobirama suddenly realizes that Izuna was probably on an espionage mission, and that it was very, very stupid not to search him for whatever information his squad found. He curses, and runs for home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story takes place in the spring.


	10. Chapter 10

The next day he finds out that Izuna is an idiot on par with Hashirama, because there’s a fox summons waiting outside his house when he wakes up. She swishes her tail and drops a folded piece of paper in front of him, then vanishes in a puff of smoke. Tobirama sighs, checks it for chakra triggers or explosives, and picks it up. It reads: _I told Brother about yesterday, but I’m not sure if he believed me. You’re a bastard who’s killed more of my clansmen than I can count, but maybe I am too, so shall we work together from the shadows to stop this war? –I_

Tobirama breathes out a small tongue of flame, turning the letter to ash. He is dangerously close to becoming a spy against his own clan. He has to tell Hashirama… but his brother will _forgive_ him. It will be too easy, because Hashirama wants peace even more than Tobirama does. There’s also the question of whether, on hearing that Tobirama has had friendly contact with the enemy, his brother will do something incredibly stupid like try to talk to Madara.

Nevertheless, it’s his duty, so he makes breakfast and patiently waits for Hashirama to wake up.

His brother enters the kitchen with extremely tangled hair, suppressing a yawn. “You made me food! You’re my favorite brother ever.”

Tobirama doesn’t point out that he is now Hashirama’s only brother, because he loathes the feeling of Hashirama’s chakra when he’s upset. Or rather, when he’s pouting. “You may change your opinion when I tell you what happened yesterday.” Hashirama raises his eyebrows, pausing with a pickle halfway to his mouth. “I met Uchiha Izuna in the forest. That is, Mizoma found him.”

“You killed him?” asks Hashirama, looking faintly sick and putting down his pickle.

“He was already wounded, and he was talking to my cat instead of trying to escape from Senju territory,” says Tobirama. “What do you think I did?”

Hashirama clearly has no idea what the right answer is, because he puts three slices of pickled radish in his mouth and tries not to look like he’s stalling. Tobirama sighs. “I healed him.”

“Oh, good,” says Hashirama, spraying bits of pickle onto the table. “I mean, it’s good because you’re a good person but it maybe wasn’t the smartest tactical decision. Still, I’m proud of you! You’d never stop being my favorite brother because you _didn’t_ kill someone.”

Tobirama takes a sip of his soup. “I did, in fact, consider strategy when I allowed him to live. In order to minimize loss of life, an alliance is the surest way. And it won’t happen if Madara finds out his brother has been killed by Senju.”

Hashirama lunges across the table, nearly spilling several bowls, to hug Tobirama. “You’re the best brother I could ever ask for,” he says, squashing his face into Tobirama’s. “I hope you know I love you a lot.”

“You’re pouring soup into my lap,” says Tobirama. It’s the closest he’s willing to get to _I’d do anything to protect you_.

“Ah. Sorry.” Hashirama grins apologetically and releases him.

“He sent me a letter this morning by fox summons, which seems to me a poor idea. It would have been very easy for someone to see his summons sneaking in and conclude that I was communicating with an enemy, especially if they _read_ the note. Since I did not want to be a spy in truth, I thought it best to tell you.”

“You really are the best, you know,” says Hashirama. “If you want to write him back you should. You’re on a mission sanctioned by the clan head. A mission of diplomacy! So if anyone questions you, send them to me. Oh, what did his letter say?”

He doesn’t want to mention Madara now, when Hashirama apparently hasn’t yet remembered him, but it’s fairly important. “It was essentially a declaration of intent—that is, to work with me secretly for the cause of peace. He also told his clan head, who _doesn’t_ intend to work for peace. He thought Izuna was lying.”

“Thought he was lying about you being a decent person? Oh, he would. He’s never liked you.” Hashirama scowls at his fish. “I should—”

“You shouldn’t,” says Tobirama, getting to his feet. “If you leave the village without me today I will assume you have decided to contact Madara, and I will hunt you down. Madara still considers himself your mortal enemy, and you must treat him with the appropriate caution. If he doesn’t kill you, he will use you as a bargaining chip to force the Senju to surrender. Excuse me. I need to change my clothes.”

He changes quietly, not wanting to wake Mito, then gathers paper, brush, and ink and goes to the back porch to write a request for letter delivery.

He’s on very good terms with the Nyashi clan, because he often hires ninja cats to complete missions for him, and he pays well. He sends his mission request using a modified version of hiraishin, having placed a target at the gates of the Nyashi fortress. His letter reads: _Having told my brother of your idea, he likes it very much. Please don’t send letters to my house, though, as your summons disturbs my chickens. I don’t want them to wake up the neighbors, or I’ll certainly get a lecture. Do you have any ideas of who might help us plan the party? I’m also thinking about how to reveal the surprise but I haven’t gotten very far. Write back soon. –Ryuu_

Izuna isn’t stupid, just not as paranoid as Tobirama. Hopefully he will take the hint and write in a less obvious code next time.

That done, he sits with Mizoma on his lap, thinking about how it can be accomplished. It’s not as if they can _trick_ Madara into making a peace treaty, but maybe they can take some prisoners and make a show of treating them well. They can even release them after a week or so (the Senju can’t afford to waste too much manpower and food on keeping them, after all) and reiterate their message of peace. Tobirama isn’t entirely sure how long they can survive when their men are getting killed and the Uchiha aren’t, but hopefully it won’t need to be long. Maybe they can put their prisoners to work. All Izuna has to do, then, is try to keep Senju casualties down as well, treacherous as it is. How many gestures of goodwill does it take to erase three generations of conflict?

Mito sits down next to him with a bowl of soup. She hasn’t put her hair up yet and looks groggy, but is more or less content to scratch Mizoma between the ears while she drinks. “Thinking hard about something?” she asks.

“I’m planning a party with one of my friends,” he answers, absently drawing the face of a cat on a leftover piece of paper.

“Hilarious. We both know you don’t have any, Tobirama.”

He very nearly smiles down at Mizoma. “Actually I was writing a treasonous letter to Uchiha Izuna asking him to help me undermine his brother.”

“Private business. I see. I won’t ask any more. I am curious, though, given that you don’t have much of a personal life, what you could be concealing from me.”

He gives in and laughs. “No, really, I was telling the truth. Ask Hashirama, if you want.” He glances sideways at Mito, who seems to be trying to figure out which is more likely: Tobirama secretly having friends or secretly being a traitor.

“You’ve made some kind of a deal with Izuna,” she concludes. “Somehow you convinced him, and he convinced you, that you both genuinely want to make peace.”

“Impressive deduction. Yes, I found him injured in the woods yesterday and healed him. I may have let him escape with intelligence he gained on a surveillance mission, but as he’s an Uchiha _maybe_ he’ll be too honorable to use it.”

“You really are one of a kind,” says Mito. She rubs under Mizoma’s chin, drawing a very loud purr out of him. “If asked, I guarantee you anyone in this village would say you would have killed him.”

“The only way we will ever have peace is if someone reaches out first,” he says, drawing the careful lines of the whiskers.

“And that’s what you were thinking when you happened upon an injured enemy who you could easily kill? You’re not as soft-hearted as Hashirama. He couldn’t just make sad eyes at you and expect you to relent.” Tobirama gives her a flat stare, and she returns it. Let her disbelieve him. It’s the truth. He is always, _always_ thinking about the good of the clan.


	11. Chapter 11

Izuna’s reply comes back within a day, while Tobirama and Mizoma are at the river. _I’m glad your brother’s willing to help! My cousin wants to help plan it too, though she spends a lot of time with you-know-who and it won’t exactly be a surprise if she gives it away. We’re working on it. I’ve told Yuura to only find you when you’re not at home, so tell me if she’s naughty and scares your chickens again. As far as I can tell you’ll be doing most of the work, unfortunately, since you’ve got friends in higher places! I’ll help as much as I can—maybe distracting my cousins while you set things up, make sure they don’t make trouble? What do you think? –Ken_

“Are you willing to wait for a few minutes?” he asks Yuura. She nods and sits down with her tail curled around her paws, eying Mizoma. Tobirama tries to ignore them as he composes his letter.

_Yuura has been very polite, thank you. If you send some of your cousins over I can put them up for perhaps a week. Don’t worry, I’ll put them to work so they don’t have to feel guilty for eating up all my food. I’ll make sure they’re well taken care of, and maybe they’ll tell everyone how much they enjoyed staying with us. It gets lonely, so I hope they put in a good word with everyone. I’ll do my best to have things ready and be the one who welcomes them. –Ryuu_

He gives it to Yuura, who takes it and runs off over the water. Now he just has to make sure that he’s heading all patrols in the area of the river for the next few days, and convince Mito to do the accounting for a little while so he can still get sleep. But he shouldn’t need to start right away, so he finishes what he’s doing and comes home as the sun sets.

Mito has invited her cousins over for dinner, he discovers. Genta and Sekki are helping Hashirama in the kitchen, while Mito and Ume discuss some aspect of sealing theory that Tobirama only half-understands despite how much he’s studied. The table is covered with paper and brushes, so they must have been here for a while.

Mizoma jumps up onto the table, nearly putting his foot in an inkwell, to greet Ume. Mito turns and smiles at Tobirama, who is still taking his sandals off by the door. “Have you had a productive day?”

“My friend wrote back to me,” he says, ignoring Genta’s disbelieving look. “As a favor to him, I need to captain all the patrols I can for the next four or five days. Can you take over some of my accounting?”

“The friend who you were talking about this morning?” asks Mito, frowning slightly.

“Yes. Hopefully he’ll be sending some guests over to stay with us.”

“ _Guests_?”

Hashirama stops working, holding his fish-covered hands and knife out in front of him. “We’re not really prepared for guests. Not the kind you’re thinking of.”

“Stop talking in code,” says Ume, annoyed. “It’s incredibly obvious, and it’s rude to discuss secrets in front of guests.”

“Is there any real disadvantage to telling them outright?” asks Mito. She makes an apologetic face at Ume. “The whole village will know soon enough. And no-one can accuse _you_ of… anything, Hashirama. Although the elders might make trouble over this.”

“Oh, very well,” says Hashirama. “Tobirama’s made friends with Uchiha Izuna and it sounds like he’s going to send us some prisoners that we can make a point of treating well so Madara will like us. Or at least believe we truly want peace. Izuna’s the one who’s in real danger if anyone tells.”

Ume sighs, and the other two Uzumaki shake their heads, as if to say they don’t even want to know about politics.

“I want to be the captain of any squad that might have a chance to take an Uchiha patrol,” says Tobirama, sitting down at the table. He rotates one of the papers so he can look at the seal upright. It appears to be for converting and storing healing chakra. “Not every Senju will be eager to take prisoners instead of heads. Hashirama, I want to go over your patrol roster and approve all the other captains, too.”

Hashirama nods, intent once again on his fish. “Most of the squad captains are already more likely to be merciful, but it’s good to make sure. And what about you all? Genta, Sekki, Ume? Do you want to help?”

“I won’t kill anyone I don’t have to,” says Sekki, shrugging.

Genta _hmms_. “As a medic nin, I’m a little concerned. We have to be much better than them if they’re killing and we’re not. They’ll quickly start to have a numerical advantage over us.”

“I believe Izuna-san has promised to try to keep his teams from killing too many of us as well,” says Tobirama. At least, if he was reading the code right.

In the end, Ume and Sekki draw a large number of chakra suppression seals while everyone hashes out logistics. When the guests have gone, Tobirama and Mito and Hashirama look over the patrol roster and rearrange it to put Tobirama at the head of as many squads as possible. And the next morning they talk to the other squad captains.

Touka thinks it’s a stupid idea, but she’s confident enough in her skills that she thinks she can capture a patrol of Uchiha even if they really are going for the kill. Yamama refuses outright to show mercy. When Hashirama tells him to leave the meeting, he glares at _Tobirama_ as he walks out, shoulders rigid. Minei looks mutinous but doesn’t say anything, which Tobirama finds much more disconcerting. He makes a note that he will take over her squad as well.

Most of the rest of the captains don’t like it, but accept that it will bring them closer to peace. By this time even Tobirama, who has enough patience for two or three people, is beginning to feel anxious to go on patrol. As soon as the meeting is over he uses hiraishin to teleport to the north gate to meet his squad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How many times have I been innocently eating dinner with my friends and they start to talk in some sort of bizarre code and I feel super left out? Granted, most of the time it's about some romance thing and not a plan to take our mortal enemies captive as a gesture of goodwill, but it's still annoying.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's got ~death and amputation~

Unfortunately, the very first Uchiha Tobirama comes across are a patrol led by Madara himself. Almost before he knows they’re there, Shuiro is cut down with a wound that will soon be fatal. Tobirama falls back into a defensive formation with his squad. Beni makes a move toward his injured teammate but Tobirama says, “Leave her. She’s as good as dead.” This is not a group they will be able to capture. When fighting Madara, one has to fight with the intent to kill, just to expect to survive. “Our orders don’t stand here. Defend as best you can, no kills if you can help it, and disengage as soon as possible.”

He meets Madara’s sword with his shortsword, not a good match. Madara has the advantage of leverage and reach, and though he’s a little bit shorter he’s also heavier. Tobirama infuses his shortsword with water chakra, letting it slide past and under Madara’s guard. As he expected, though, Madara avoids his strike, reacting almost before Tobirama starts the motion.

Tobirama jumps back, giving himself space to draw one of his marked kunai. He’ll need both hands, so as he dodges Madara’s flames and a strike at his side from one of the other Uchiha, he sheathes his shortsword. He throws one kunai as a test—just as Izuna sometimes did, Madara catches it and holds it in front of him, a dagger to match his sword. He’s more dangerous now (barely) but more importantly his hands are full, so Tobirama can appear behind him. He turns just a little too slowly, although he knew it was coming, and barely blocks Tobirama’s attack. Tobirama jumps back, away from the fighting. He _could_ take down Madara, he thinks, if it were one-on-one. Must more proof that Hashirama hasn’t once fought him seriously in the last four years.

More important than testing Madara’s limits, though, is keeping his team alive. He throws two kunai: one as a decoy, and one to let him meet an Uchiha’s blade twelve meters away. The woman staggers back, startled, and Tobirama takes the opportunity to paralyze her leg with lightning. “Thanks,” says Kankyouma behind him, kicking the sword out of the Uchiha’s hand.

Unfortunately, while he’s been gone, Madara severed Hayashi’s hand. He grits his teeth, throws a kunai, and resigns himself to keeping Madara occupied. “Wrap that up,” he tells Hayashi, never moving his gaze from Madara’s chest, where he won’t accidentally look at the sharingan. “Get to a safe distance and stanch it, then seal Shuiro’s body.” It’s going to be much more difficult than he thought not to kill anyone. _Why_ did it have to be Madara?

He manages to blast Madara back with his water dragon bullet, catching another Uchiha at the edge, but Madara’s stamina is seemingly inexhaustible, even with the wounds Tobirama has given him. Tobirama whistles the signal for _get off the ground_ and then activates his quicksand jutsu, trapping three Uchiha up to their waists in the ground. “Retreat for now,” he says, and throws a few explosive tags to cover their exit.

They rest half a kilometer away, where Tobirama is confident Madara won’t follow, because he has no affinity for earth and needs to rescue his clansmen. “How’s Shuiro?” he asks, gently lifting Hayashi’s right arm.

“Dead, like you said,” says Hayashi. “Never had a chance.” He hisses in pain when Tobirama starts healing his wrist, jagged with shards of bone and torn tendons.

“The no-kill order is bullshit,” Beni growls, starting to heal a gash on his own arm. “We’re never going to win another engagement if we keep that up. They were _slaughtering_ us. If anyone else had been our captain we would all be dead.”

Tobirama’s own resolve is wavering. He wants peace, but how many Senju is he willing to sacrifice for it? Yet he can’t voice his doubts to his subordinates. A leader cannot be seen to have any doubt at all. “It won’t be for long,” he tells them. “We _will_ get a chance to prove our conviction, and soon. Not every patrol is led by Uchiha Madara.” Having finished with Hayashi’s arm, he stands. “Is everyone able to run?”

They make it home around sunset, chilled and bitter from their defeat. Tobirama sends his team to the real medics and, being the only uninjured one, goes to the patrol headquarters to write up his report.

He’s pleased to see Touka there, mostly unharmed as she writes. “Did you have any luck?” he asks.

She shakes her head, grimacing. “Didn’t see anyone, though that’s expected given where we were. You?”

“One dead, one less a hand,” he says, trying not to glare at the paper he’s writing the same report on. “Madara is untouched. Hopefully he’s still digging his team out of the ground where I stuck them.”

“That is some _impressively_ bad luck,” says Touka, sounding impressed. “So pacifism didn’t go over well, I take it.”

“None of _them_ are dead, and that’s the best I can say for it. Madara certainly didn’t appreciate our efforts.”

Touka sighs, and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Next time,” she tells him.

He still can’t quite bring himself to believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "disengage as soon as possible" says tobirama, and then proceeds to fight madara for like 3 minutes


	13. Chapter 13

In the next month, they manage to capture only two Uchiha patrols, and none of the Uchiha seem to appreciate being well-treated instead of killed as much as they should. Even when Tobirama points out, as he’s escorting them back toward their home territory, that this is a gesture of peace, only one of them answers him. It’s a cruel answer, and it suggests that he intends to take advantage of the Senju’s clemency. The others are silent, and Tobirama has no way of knowing what they think about it.

Izuna’s letters grow shorter, filled with suppressed anger whose cause he can’t tell Tobirama in code. The latest one reads only, _Damn him! He’s convinced he’s about to get his way at last, and won’t listen to reason. I’m worried about you over there. Don’t give everything away, all right?_

And Tobirama is _tired_ , as all the Senju are tired, of losing battles to prove a point. He thought this would be over quickly, that Madara wanted peace as much as Hashirama does. It’s affecting his brother too; Hashirama’s smiles have dimmed, as if he can never quite forget how much of their work is for nothing. But he keeps his own council, and Tobirama does the same.

He writes to Izuna, _Everyone is frustrated. They’re saying we should give up on this. Even I am starting to give up. If you don’t have any ideas, we’ll be forced to stop letting your cousins stay with us. –Ryuu_

He gets a reply much more quickly than usual. _Fine. I’m fed up too. Come to that place on the river at midnight tonight, and we’ll fix this._ Izuna could only mean the place where Hashirama and Madara used to meet, where the trust between them was broken forever. The irony isn’t lost on Tobirama.

He gets there early, watching the moon rise and trying to remember the names of all the Senju who have already died for this peace that may never come. What solution could Izuna have that they haven’t tried already? The only thing Tobirama can think of is so obvious that if he were willing he would have done it long ago.

“Are you there?” says Izuna softly, barely audible over the sound of the river. Tobirama stands up and raises a hand. Izuna walks across the water toward him, a shadow made solid against the moon’s bright reflection in the water. Tobirama can feel his chakra, a dim violet flame, much more clearly than he can see his face. When he comes to stand in front of Tobirama, Izuna sighs loudly through his nose. “Nothing else is working. I thought I could change things from the inside, but he won’t _listen_. I’m taking myself hostage.”

Then the reason he never did this before is that he thought he would be more useful where he was. Still, Tobirama wasn’t unaware of this possibility, so he takes a seal out of his weapons pouch. “I’ll have to suppress your chakra,” he says. “Standard procedure.”

“Go ahead,” says Izuna. Tobirama presses the seal into the back of his hand, and he winces. “I’ve never been suppressed before,” he says. “This isn’t the most pleasant.”

Ignoring the complaint, Tobirama asks, “Do you really think this will work? If he hasn’t been affected by the dozen other hostages we’ve taken, why would you be any different?”

“This time I’m not coming back until he agrees to a treaty,” says Izuna, his voice full of barely-restrained anger. “We’ll see if it makes a difference if it’s his beloved little brother. I know he loves me more than anything, but I don’t know why he won’t _listen_ to me. He used to want peace so badly and now he’s so paranoid it might be a trick that he doesn’t even consider the possibility that it’s real! I know he has a lot of pressure on him to make sure the clan survives, but this is a bit much, isn’t it?”

Tobirama isn’t sure if and how he should reply. He’s a little surprised by how familiarly Izuna speaks, as if he’s complaining to a close friend about his brother leaving messes. “I don’t pretend to understand your brother’s psyche, and certainly no better than you,” he says. “I do know that he was… very different, before. I am a little concerned that he will realize we pose no threat to your safety and disregard the fact that we’re keeping you hostage.”

Izuna tilts his head down, and Tobirama thinks he might be biting his lip, though it’s too dark under the trees to tell. “I’m concerned about that too. But it was the only thing I could think of. I left him a letter explaining why I did it… I just hope…”

They make good time back to the village because Tobirama doesn’t insist on staying close to Izuna. He can’t help but wonder if it’s wise to trust Izuna so much. In the beginning, there wasn’t much Izuna could do to him, because capturing Uchiha patrols relied mostly on the Senju’s own skills, not on sabotage from the inside. Now, after writing to each other for a month—sometimes even when there wasn’t news about their efforts toward peace—he feels that he knows Izuna. But despite all that, he doesn’t, truly. He still needs to be cautious. Even with his chakra suppressed, Uchiha Izuna is a potentially dangerous enemy, and Tobirama would be a fool to treat him like a friend just because he acts friendly.

Mizoma greets Tobirama at the front door with an offended yowl. He’s angry that Tobirama went out without him, sneaking out while Mizoma was eating so that he wouldn’t get hurt in the event of an ambush. Izuna bends down to Mizoma’s level, offering his fingers to sniff. “Remember me, Mizoma?” he asks softly, crouching in the doorway of the Senju clan head’s house like he’s trying to forget he doesn’t belong there. “This time I can _walk_ , which is much nicer. I hope you’ve been good. Not giving Tobirama too much trouble?”

Tobirama edges around Izuna and the purring Mizoma. Izuna seems to have no dignity at all when it comes to cats. “Delighted as I’m sure Mizoma is to see you again,” he says, “you’re here to talk to Hashirama, not the cat.”

“Ah. Right. Sorry.” Izuna steps out of his sandals, closes the door behind him, and enters the dark house. Moonlight is coming in faintly through the screen doors, and there’s still a light on in the bedroom. Tobirama peers around the doorway to make sure neither Hashirama nor Mito is asleep before he gestures for Izuna to follow him in.

“We have an unexpected guest,” he murmurs. Mito looks up from Tobirama’s neglected accounting, and Hashirama sets down the scroll he was reading. “Uchiha Izuna, Senju Hashirama and Uzumaki Mito.”

Izuna bows. “I have come to offer myself as a hostage, in hopes of persuading my brother to make peace with your clan. If you have any work for me I will gladly do it, so as not to be a burden.”

Hashirama smiles, although he looks even more tired than usual in the lanternlight. “Welcome, Izuna-san. And thank you for trusting us with your life. We’ll do our best to deserve that trust.”

“Where is he going to stay?” asks Tobirama. “As a voluntary hostage we can’t quite imprison him like we did the others, but we do need to have a measure of caution in case he is deceiving us.” He turns to Izuna, a little apologetic. “You understand.”

“Of course,” says Izuna.

“I really don’t want to deal with it tonight,” mutters Hashirama. “No-one will be awake to guard him, and anywhere we could keep him is empty right now.”

Mito gives him a disapproving look, but Tobirama almost expected this. “Then I will watch him. I’m probably going to sleep for ten hours as soon as you wake up, so you can work it out then.”

Hashirama smiles guiltily at him, but says, “Thank you, brother.”

Tobirama stands and beckons Izuna to follow him. He goes to find the extra futon and unfolds it in the main room, then sits down a little ways away. “You’re free to sleep,” he says quietly. “I’ll keep watch.”

Izuna takes the blanket he’s offered and hesitantly lies down, facing toward Tobirama. He’s probably uneasy going to sleep so close to someone who has always been his enemy. After a minute, he whispers, “Do all three of you sleep in the same room?”

“We do,” says Tobirama.

Rather than answering, Izuna falls silent, and though it takes a long time eventually he falls asleep.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's got STABBINGS and BLOOD

Word spreads quickly through the clan that Uchiha Izuna has been taken prisoner, although not everyone seems to know that Izuna came of his own free will. He tries to be friendly, but from what Tobirama has seen most Senju would rather see him locked up than having tea at their clan head’s house. Officially he’s being kept at the patrol headquarters, where he has two guards watching him. Tobirama, whose paranoia has often served him well before, keeps track of the chakra signatures that come and go around Izuna’s small, seal-warded room.

On the fifth night, a dense cluster of four chakra signatures makes its way into the patrol headquarters. It’s just unusual enough that Tobirama’s focus, which was half on his work, sharpens to let him see what is happening.

He recognizes all of the signatures at least passing well, and he doesn’t like the edge of anticipation they have. He gets out of bed hurriedly and leaves without even putting on his shoes, though he does remember to take his shortsword and a marked kunai, which always sit by his bed. He uses hiraishin to jump to the east gate and the body flicker technique to speed his steps as he runs toward the patrol headquarters. The cluster of chakra signatures are spiking, which means they’re using ninjutsu, and the signatures of the two guards dim. He _should_ have marked Izuna with the hiraishin already, should have done it as soon as they met at the river. Hell, he probably should have done it when he healed Izuna in the forest.

He can feel that Izuna has woken up as he wrenches open the door to the building. Let him not be too late. He practically skids around the corner to see two unconscious guards and one conscious one, who is looking into the room. He creates a shadow clone to take care of that one, and enters the room at speed.

Two of the remaining three shinobi have swords drawn, standing over Izuna, who seems to be trying to defend himself with a scroll. One raises his sword, and almost without thinking Tobirama throws his kunai and appears in front of it as the man stabs. It would have gone straight through him to Izuna if he didn’t catch the flat of the blade in his hands.

The man stares at him, shocked, for a few long seconds, then lets go of the sword and backs away.

“Tobirama, _why_?” Izuna says. “Protecting me I understand, but taking a sword for me just seems like overkill!”

“It was the only way I could think of,” he whispers, unable to get enough air. He can feel blood bubbling in his chest. “If you die, so does any chance we have for peace. Your brother will stop at nothing to destroy every Senju, man, woman, and child. My life isn’t worth much compared to that.” He looks up pointedly at the horrified conspirators, who at least have the decency to look ashamed.

“I think you have a punctured lung,” says Izuna.

“Can you draw the sword out slowly for me, so I can heal myself as it comes out? And _you_ , don’t go anywhere. I know your chakra signatures, and I can hunt you down from anywhere in Fire Country. I’ll just be less angry if I _don’t_ have to hunt you down.”

The shinobi gather into a worried knot by the door, whispering. Tobirama ignores them for now, because Izuna is lowering him to the ground and gripping the hilt of the sword. “Ready?”

“Slowly,” whispers Tobirama, putting his hands on either side of the blade. “Ready.” It slides out, and he heals just enough to keep from bleeding into his lung. As he repairs the membrane of his lung, it’s able to inflate properly again and he can breathe. He’s no longer in danger of passing out, because he long ago learned to stay conscious past his pain threshold. Or maybe he is, because he already used too much chakra on getting here.

The end of the sword comes out, dripping onto Tobirama’s sleeping clothes. Izuna sets it down on the floor and looks at Tobirama. “You going to be okay?”

Tobirama has his eyes closed now, because he can’t keep them open. “Lend me your chakra?” He releases the suppressing seal on Izuna.

Izuna’s hands press over his, and flame-violet chakra flows into them. It’s surprisingly easy to convert; he recalls that Mito’s chakra always fought him when they tried to charge a seal together. Like her, it’s unwilling to be subordinate to anyone.

When he’s as close to healthy as he’ll get tonight, he says, “Would you care to explain why you are trying to assassinate a valuable political hostage?” It takes a lot of effort to enunciate clearly, and he has to speak more slowly than usual to find the right words. “Even aside from the rules of decency that dictate how we treat prisoners of war, it would be incredibly stupid to destroy what leverage we have against the Uchiha.”

“They’ve never held back against us,” mutters one of them. “It’d be stupid to let one of their best fighters go when we have a chance to stop him. This one _says_ he’s here to make peace but who’s going to believe an Uchiha?”

“Your clan leader and his heir,” says Tobirama. He wants them to understand that this is the most foolish idea they have ever had. “Do you think we do anything without good reason? Do you think we would let this clan be destroyed?”

“I don’t have to think it,” says another, “I know it. What do you call this last month? The death toll has risen fourfold since _Hashirama_ decided we’re too _moral_ for killshots.”

Tobirama’s shadow clone enters with rope, sleeping seals, and the unconscious body of the other attacker. “You have your reasons, and you believe you are acting for the good of the clan. I can respect that. However, you have disobeyed orders from your clan head, and you must be judged for it. Will you come quietly?”

“If you can promise a public trial,” says the second shinobi, the bold one.

“I promise,” says Tobirama. “Now I will have to bind you and put you to sleep.”

He lets the shadow clone do it for him. By the time it disappears, he’s nearly asleep where he’s propped against the wall. The jolt of anxiety that he assimilates from his clone wakes him up a little, and he asks, “You’re not hurt, are you, Izuna-san?”

Izuna lets out a disbelieving laugh. “Am I _hurt_? No, I have a couple of bruises where they kicked me, but I’ll be fine. More importantly, how am I going to get you home? You clearly can’t walk right now.” Tobirama is falling asleep again, and he can’t form the words in his mind to answer. Izuna sighs. “You can have my bed, then. It’s not very comfortable, since it’s a prisoner’s bed, but it will do. I’ll stay awake and watch for you.” The last thing he hears before he passes out completely is a mumbled, “This is going to look so bad if anyone comes in before you wake up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It would be foolish to treat Izuna like a friend just because he acts friendly," thinks Tobirama, and then tries to die for Izuna five days later


	15. Chapter 15

He wakes in an unfamiliar place with sunlight falling on him, and his chest hurts. He reaches for the kunai he keeps by his bed on pure instinct, and is a little surprised when he actually finds it where he expected to. He sits up and looks around. Izuna is folded up against the wall, staring at him from under furrowed brows. “Good morning, Tobirama,” he says. “How do you feel?”

“Not amazing, but not about to die.” He turns to look for the four would-be assassins he sealed last night, and finds nothing. “How did they…”

“I woke up the guards,” says Izuna, unfolding himself and standing up. “Thankfully, they believed me that I hadn’t done it, and took those guys to another cell. Are you ready to go home?”

Tobirama gets to his feet, a little painfully. “I have enough chakra for hiraishin with a passenger. Oh, and before I forget, I ought to mark you. In case something like this happens again.” When Izuna doesn’t seem to object, he says, “Give me your hand.” He puts a hiraishin mark on Izuna’s wrist, then pulls him closer to execute a jump to his house. They land on the front porch—Tobirama is relieved they won’t track any dirt into the house—and Izuna pulls away from him, looking sick.

“How do you do that during battle?” he asks. “That’s _horrible_.”

“I’m used to it,” says Tobirama.

The sliding door bangs open, and they both flinch. Hashirama rushes out and catches Tobirama in a tight hug. “Little brother! Why did you disappear last night? We heard you run out, but when I went outside you were gone!”

“Just some people trying to assassinate me,” says Izuna. “He got stabbed through the chest and passed out in my cell.”

“ _Brother_.” Hashirama holds him at arms’ length and inspects him, taking in the hole in his yukata and the large bloodstain under it. It will have to be thrown out. “I _know_ you’re a better fighter than that.”

Tobirama shrugs wearily. “Can we talk about this over breakfast? I used up almost all of my chakra last night.”

Hashirama rolls his eyes theatrically and pulls Tobirama inside, gesturing for Izuna to follow. “So you stepped in front of a sword even though you probably could have found another way to stop it? Smart people are so _stupid_.”

“What would you have done?” Tobirama snaps.

Hashirama doesn’t reply. He fills two bowls with rice and sets them in front of Tobirama and Izuna. “Eat,” he says. “You both had a stressful night. I’ll make you some beef. Now, tell me what happened.”

“I was watching Izuna-san’s room remotely while I was reading,” says Tobirama. He pauses for a mouthful of rice. “It was midnight, so I thought it was suspicious that four people were going to the patrol headquarters in a group. It took me a long time to get there, though, because I never marked the headquarters or Izuna-san. They’d knocked out the guards and were about to kill him.”

“So this idiot jumped in front of their swords and got himself stabbed,” says Izuna. “He actually told off the assassins with a punctured lung, and then after he healed himself, on the edge of chakra exhaustion, he talked them into letting him tie them up as long as they got a public trial! Who _is_ this man, and where did you get him?”

Hashirama laughs. Tobirama does not. “He really is the dumbest genius ever, isn’t he?”

“I think my brother would give him some competition.” Izuna sounds amused, but then his face falls into a scowl. “If he doesn’t open negotiations soon, we’re sending him a letter. I don’t know what’s taking him so long.”

They find out that very night exactly what took Madara so long to open negotiations: he was planning a rescue mission, not a peace conference.

Izuna is staying at their house for now, because Tobirama doesn’t want an actually clever assassin to find Izuna before he can get there. He’s sleeping between Tobirama and Mito when the seals that detect unfamiliar chakra flare a warning in all their heads. Izuna wakes up when three other people reach for their weapons.

“Six of them,” Tobirama whispers as he picks up his shortsword.

“Wait,” says Izuna, grabbing his wrist. “I’m no sensor, but I know some of these people. They’re Uchiha. Let me deal with it.” He gets to his feet and leaves the room, the rest of them hanging back by the door. “Chikayo, Irika, what are you doing here?”

“What the fuck do you think we’re doing here?” hisses one of them. “We’re rescuing you.”

“Did Madara even _read_ my note?” asks Izuna. “He thinks he can get out of negotiations this easily? Look, go home and tell him I’m staying until he decides to be reasonable and end this war.”

“We have our orders—”

“I’ll fight you if I have to, Irika.” He leans back through the doorway to the bedroom. “Can I borrow a sword?”

“Please don’t fight inside the house,” says Mito, but she hands him one of Hashirama’s swords from the wall. Tobirama didn’t know she trusted him that much, although if she’s willing to sleep in the same room as him there’s not much more trust she can give.

“Right, sorry. If you want to fight me, we’ll have to go to the back yard.”

“Who was that?” asks one of the Uchiha.

“Lady Mito, Senju Hashirama’s wife. You don’t recognize her chakra because she almost never goes on patrols, but I’m sure you recognize the other two chakra signatures. Hm?”

“Were you _sleeping with all three of them_?” asks a disbelieving voice.

“In the most technical sense, yes,” Izuna answers. “They’re defending me from assassins.”

“This is so fucked,” mutters Irika.

“Look,” Izuna says sharply, “I’m the one who’s trying to fight you. The Senju are leaving you to me because they’re _polite_. I don’t know who I have to kidnap to convince you all of their goodwill! I tried kidnapping myself, but clearly that wasn’t enough. Maybe I should kidnap Madara and depose him as clan head, because I am _sick_ of his _nonsense_. Do you know how long I’ve been trying to make this happen? Well, only about two months, but it was a _long_ two months. So get your heads out of your asses and go away, because I’m not interested in being rescued.”

There’s a silence, as if none of them knows what to say after Izuna’s angry speech. Tobirama’s heart is pounding and his hands itch on the grip of his shortsword to eliminate the enemies in his house. He has very little interest in being polite right now, but he forces himself not to move. He is furthering the interests of diplomacy by not killing anyone.

Hashirama has no such sense of subtlety. He appears next to Izuna, and Tobirama can hear him smiling graciously as he says, “Since it doesn’t seem like you’re going to fight, would you like some tea? I know it’s late, but you’re probably hungry, and we have sweet bean buns. They’re very good.” There’s an awkward silence that stretches for far too long, during which Tobirama can only imagine the disbelieving looks on the Uchiha’s faces. “…No? Well, can you at least tell Madara to bring a delegation to the river at noon the day after tomorrow to negotiate? He’ll know where I mean.”

The Uchiha scatter, flickering out through the front door and quickly leaving the village.

“ _Does_ anyone want tea?” asks Hashirama. “Since we’re up?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Hashirama..... what a peach.....


	16. Chapter 16

It is with great relief that Tobirama finds Madara waiting with two high-ranked Uchiha shinobi and two elders at the river. Concealed in the trees on the other side of the river are four more shinobi, but that’s only to be expected. Tobirama thinks it’s polite of them not to be concealing their chakra. The hidden Senju shinobi aren’t, after all.

From the moment his party becomes visible, Madara’s eyes are locked on his brother. When he gets close enough he says, “Izuna, you _idiot_. They could have killed you.”

Izuna’s mouth twists angrily. “They had their chance to kill me when Tobirama found me injured in the forest. He healed me instead. He couldn’t do any more damage to me this time than he could then.” He doesn’t mention that the Senju _did_ try to kill him while he was there. It probably wouldn’t help their case.

“We do not trust Senju,” says Madara, stone-faced. “Who are we?”

“Stubborn asses, evidently,” mutters Izuna. Aloud, he says, “Look, can we accept that I’m not dead and the Senju deserve trust and move on to the alliance issue?

Madara snorts contemptuously.  “I have very little interest in an alliance, no matter how equal they _say_ it will be.”

“What about a peace treaty?” asks Hashirama. “We don’t have to work together, but if we could avoid killing each other…” He looks disappointed already by the idea of not working together. He truly never has given up on finding a way to be friends with Madara again. It’s the height of foolishness, but it’s what makes Hashirama who he is.

“How could we trust you?” asks Madara.

Tobirama feels Izuna’s patience snap a moment before he shouts, “How can _we_ trust _them_? How are _they_ ever going to trust _us_ after how hard they worked to prove their intentions, after we kept killing them anyway? You don’t get to accuse the Senju of planning to break the peace treaty they proposed. You—”

“Izuna-san,” says Tobirama quietly, turning to give him a suppressing stare. “You are not here to scream at your brother. If you want to take part in negotiations, do it like an adult.”

Izuna grimaces, but he does use a politer voice at a more reasonable volume. “What _would_ prove the Senju’s pure intentions to you, Madara?”

“A hostage,” says Madara. He’s watching Hashirama. “The most valuable hostage I can take from you.”

“I hope you realize,” says Tobirama, “that you will have to treat me as a guest, and not a prisoner? It won’t look very—”

“I wasn’t.” Madara slowly turns his eyes on Tobirama with a small, vindictive smile. “Talking about you.”

Hashirama frowns and half-twists around to look at Mito. “Mito, are you—”

“You, Hashirama. You are the most valuable thing the Senju clan has.”

Tobirama might disagree that Hashirama is more valuable than he is, but he also suspects that that isn’t Madara’s entire motivation. And _that_ is the reason he objects. But as unorthodox as it is to use the clan head as a hostage, it will be very effective. The clan won’t like it, the elders certainly won’t, and Tobirama doesn’t either—but it’s a good tactical move. He stays silent, waiting for Hashirama to speak.

“I wouldn’t want to leave the clan without a head,” he says, uncertain. “For however long this is necessary.”

“Don’t you think your brother is capable?”

“Of course I do! I just…” Hashirama trails off, apparently lost in some kind of staring contest with Madara, even though they’re several meters apart. There’s an uncomfortably long silence, during which both Mito and Izuna give Tobirama significant looks that he doesn’t know how to interpret.

“Are you willing or not, Hashirama?” asks Mito.

Hashirama looks around guiltily. “You’d be okay with me leaving you alone?” Tobirama can tell he has already made up his mind, and is now trying to rationalize his decision. Tobirama doesn’t like it—the influence of the Uchiha will bias Hashirama in their favor—but he’s resigned to it. It’s very difficult to stop Hashirama once he has decided on a course of action. And at least this time it won’t be overtly harmful to the clan, unless Madara really is planning on treachery. Would Izuna give up his life, if Hashirama were killed? He doesn’t want to think about the possibility.

“Go,” says Mito. “Each side will draft a peace treaty and we will meet here to discuss them in two weeks. You will work with Uchiha-san, and Izuna-san will assist us.” Izuna directs an amused look at Tobirama: he is Izuna-san, and his brother is _Uchiha-san_ , with all the contemptuous inflection Mito can pass off as courtesy. “Each side will have representatives from both clans, and as long as _you_ treat your hostage well we will all be able to make equal contributions.”

Madara scowls at her. “We’ll treat our hostage well. We will also continue patrolling our territory, and if we find any Senju we will take it as an act of war.” _And kill Hashirama_ , is the implied end of the sentence.

“Then we will do the same,” says Tobirama. “Brother, do you need to get anything before you leave?” He rather enjoyed the fact that Izuna brought several of his favorite books and his best clothing when he took himself prisoner; it was an excellent example of passive-aggressive assurance that he was leaving of his own free will. Not that Madara seemed to care. The man has no sense of subtlety.

“No need,” says Hashirama cheerfully. “I can just have anything I need delivered.” He’s already leaning slightly toward the Uchiha party, as if he’s itching to leave. This isn’t going to end well.

“Before _I_ go then, brother,” says Izuna, “I’d like to ask for two things. Can you send me my favorite sword? And also, a hug?” He smiles charmingly at Madara, who looks suspicious but comes to embrace his brother anyway. It becomes clear why he’s wary when Izuna punches him in the face, sending him one step backward into shallows of the river. “You stubborn idiot. You shouldn’t have waited a week, let alone half a year!” He turns back toward the Senju party and says, “If everyone else is done, I’m ready to go.” Hashirama, of course, can’t leave without picking Tobirama up and crushing him in a tight hug, but then he quickly runs off with Madara.

When they return to their own house, Tobirama is pleased by how quickly they get work done on the treaty without Hashirama even as he worries for his brother—Hashirama has an unfortunate tendency to get distracted, and his distraction is contagious. Their plan is to bring their draft to the elders for discussion tomorrow, but they finish early and have the time to spend making a proper dinner. Izuna makes a very good salad from an Uchiha recipe, and spends much of the preparation time telling the most embarrassing stories he knows about Madara. Tobirama allows it because Mito enjoys having the ammunition against him, and because it will help him make a character study of Madara. He can only conclude that Madara is a man like any other, stubborn and proud but willing to die for what he protects. And extremely prone to embarrassing situations, if the number of stories Izuna has is any indication.

Mito, the gracious hostess, insists that Izuna sleep between them in case of further assassination attempts. Izuna seems very pleased about it, but not as pleased as Mizoma. Mizoma sprawls across Izuna’s chest and stretches one paw toward Tobirama, looking smug. It’s the natural way for a cat to look, but Tobirama feels that Mizoma is just glad to have someone who tolerates him while sleeping. Whatever makes him happy, Tobirama thinks, and turns his back on the cat to go to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh!! Now that all of these characters have appeared, I can post this picture of them from 2 years ago (story time):
> 
> No, I have no idea how Touka's hair works. I'm not entirely sure the artists even did. And of course, the Uzumaki next to Mito is Ume.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Touka is a coercive partier. Tobirama doesn't get drunk.

Izuna isn’t able to give his brother the silent treatment for long. Every morning when Tobirama wakes up, Izuna is composing a letter to Madara, and they’re remarkably friendly given how angry he seemed before. When Tobirama asks why, Izuna says, “Well, he’s working on fixing it now, so I got what I wanted. And I miss him. _And_.” He grins at Tobirama. “He complains about your brother, so I get insider information on what’s happening back home. Don’t you want to know what they’re up to?”

“He can’t possibly have that much to complain about,” says Tobirama, sitting down by Izuna and handing him a bowl of soup. “Hashirama has only been there for three days.”

“You’d honestly be surprised,” says Izuna. “Let’s see, on the first day they got into a shouting match and Hashirama started crying—Brother won’t tell me what it was about, just that he was annoyed. Hah! Two days ago they got into an argument about the treaty and Madara pissed off half the elders. Yesterday he complained about… Hm, he said that he was telling me in confidence, but it’s really funny, so—”

“If someone tells you something in confidence, don’t you think you ought to keep that confidence?” says Tobirama. “I thought the Uchiha were _honorable_.”

Izuna wilts. “Yeah, you’re right. But it could be important! They’re picking up exactly where they left off four years ago. Does that seem suspicious to you?”

“Knowing Hashirama, not at all. He has been… for lack of a better word, _pining_ for Madara. He never even tried to kill Madara when they were fighting.”

“Madara calls it _dancing_ ,” says Izuna, raising his eyebrows at Tobirama. “I think that tells you all you need to know about _his_ feelings.”

Disgusted, Tobirama shakes his head. “I never should have allowed him to be the hostage. I could have stopped him if I wanted to, even if I had to knock him out.”

“How much trouble can they get into in two weeks?” asks Izuna, but he sounds doubtful, because he has met both of them.

“So someone finally managed to engage you in petty gossip,” says Mito from behind them, amused. “All it took was gossip about your brother.”

Izuna flushes guiltily. “Lady Mito! Forgive me for gossiping about your husband without telling you. Tobirama’s just the one who asked.”

Mito sits down next to Tobirama with her breakfast. “I’ll make sure to ask in the future, then. Gossip about Hashirama is _very_ important to me, as a concerned friend.”

“As a nosy friend,” Tobirama corrects her. She simply smiles at him, looking as smug as any cat.

Izuna, who has relaxed marginally, says, “Well, most of the gossip so far is just them fighting like children. They’re acting just like they did when they were twelve, as far as I can tell.”

“When they were twelve?” Mito narrows her eyes. “Were they… friends?”

No-one in the Senju village ever talks about what happened, and most don’t even know. It would have been quite a scandal if everyone had known the clan head’s heir was fraternizing with an Uchiha, so their father swore them to secrecy. The only other people who knew were Touka, because it fell to her to comfort Hashirama after Tobirama broke his brother’s trust, and their mother. He doesn’t regret it, because if he hadn’t told their father Hashirama would have been killed. But he does regret the way their father set them against each other, set Tobirama against himself.

“They were best friends,” says Izuna finally. “They both made sure not to say which clan they were from so they wouldn’t have to fight. They…” They were in love, thinks Tobirama, with each other and with the ideals they shared. Hashirama still is. And from the look he was giving Hashirama, so is Madara. “…spent a lot of time together. They’re both dreamers, and it’s a little surprising it took them this long to come back to their dream, but Madara always hated things he couldn’t control.”

“No-one can control Hashirama,” says Mito. “Believe me, I have tried.”

“In that, they are a perfect match,” says Izuna. “Not that—I mean, maybe that’s kind of tactless thing to say to his wife—”

Mito waves away his concerns with one regal hand. She’s used to flustering people, especially men, with her impenetrable poise and her air of being slightly too good for everyone. “Don’t be silly. It wasn’t a love match, it was a political move. I couldn’t care less what you’re implying they get up to. As long as they’re _discreet_ enough not to offend our clans. And as long as Hashirama is honest.”

Izuna’s face becomes even redder, practically glowing with the force of his embarrassment. “I’m not implying that they’re—involved, Lady Mito. I just meant… Tobirama, help me!”

Tobirama regards him with amusement. “You _were_ implying that they are _involved_. That’s how I interpreted it, at least. You even seemed to share my concern about the potential consequences of such an involvement.”

“I hate you,” Izuna mutters. “I’m going to write my letter in peace somewhere far away from you. And I’m going to tell him exactly what we were talking about so he can be as embarrassed as I am. Good- _bye_ , Tobirama. Lady Mito.” He walks stiffly into the house, where Tobirama can sense him muttering complaints to Mizoma.

Mito declares her intent to write to Hashirama and shoos Tobirama away to let her concentrate, as if the porch is her exclusive domain. Tobirama will not be writing to his brother, because as much as he loves him, Hashirama is more trouble than writing to him is worth. And since Tobirama refuses to engage in petty gossip, he has no reason to care what his brother does until the peace talks start.

To his surprise, he receives a letter from Hashirama the following morning. It’s as long as it is inane, and he mentions by name a dozen Uchiha who he has already befriended. Tobirama finds this quite distasteful, since as far as he has observed most Uchiha are nasty, ungrateful, and violent when they have no need to be. But Hashirama, if dropped at the bottom of a pond, would be friends with all the catfish within an hour. He has no standards whatsoever.

 _Madara is a frustration, as always,_ Hashirama writes. _I keep telling him that nothing will ever change if we don’t unite our strength, but he_ will _tell me that I’m just trying to subordinate the Uchiha clan. He shouldn’t tell me my own intentions, but he’s always thought he knows best. I’ll wear him down eventually, though I might have to resort to extortion. Don’t worry, it won’t be anything too bad!_

He then goes on to write another fifty lines on a party thrown by one of Madara’s cousins and everything he did there. If he didn’t know better, Tobirama would suspect this was supposed to be some kind of code, because no-one could possibly find this interesting. But Hashirama genuinely does want to tell his brother about his stay at the Uchiha compound. It would be endearing if it weren’t such drivel.

Hashirama has also entirely neglected to mention their progress on drafting the treaty, which either means it was so quick he forgot about it—unlikely—or that he’s trying to avoid thinking about it because it isn’t going well.

Tobirama doesn’t bother to send a reply, because it’s not worth the half-kilogram of tuna he’ll have to pay the Nyashi messenger just to tell his brother he’s an idiot. Maybe he’ll ask Mito to pass on a message from him next time she writes.

As for the rest, the village runs as smoothly as it did when Hashirama was here, but the people are unsettled. Most are probably still resentful of the toll pacifism took on them, and it doesn’t look good that Hashirama left them during the peace talks without making any sort of announcement. The trial of Izuna’s would-be assassins does not entirely increase everyone’s confidence, though the clan seems to accept that they were wrong. Tobirama ends up going to Mito’s party to give a speech, as acting clan head, thanking the Senju for their faith in their leaders. “I am humbled,” he says to a crowd of restless people waiting to get drunk, “by how much you all sacrificed on my and my brother’s word. I’ll make this quick because I am aware you would all rather be drinking—” a few people laugh— “but all three of us are deeply grateful, and we will do our best to ensure that you don’t have to fight any more wars. We will do our best to ensure that your children are safe. That is the reason we all fought so hard for this treaty, and the reason we continue to do whatever we have to. Thank you.”

As soon as he steps down and the noise of the crowd resumes, Touka appears by his shoulder with a bottle of sake and a cup. “Cousin, cousin, I simply will not allow you to leave this party without having a drink. The sentiment was nice, but that was the dourest speech I’ve ever heard. You’d make your brother weep.”

“Then it’s a good thing he wasn’t here to hear it. I’ll have one cup of sake, if it will stop you pestering me. I’m sure your intention is to get me drunk, which you _won’t_.” He accepts the cup from her and downs it, which since he hasn’t eaten for hours is probably a foolish idea.

He turns to go, but she snags him by the back of his yukata and says, “Oh, no you don’t, Tobi. You’re going to sit with me and Sekki and Tarou and talk politics with us and listen to us checking out the people dancing. I won’t let you die without going to a _real_ party and _staying_.”

“I’m much less likely to die now that we’re going to be allied with the Uchiha,” he points out.

She slaps the back of his head and doesn’t let him go. “Then you’ll keep trying to sneak out of parties for another sixty years, I’m sure. Come on. We have sashimi. Where’s Izuna, by the way? I want to drag him into our politics talk.”

Tobirama sighs. “If you want to, you can try. Izuna-san is at our house with three of his summons watching, in case there is another assassination attempt. He’s really not at all fond of most Senju, and I think he’s justified.”

“I haven’t really met him, but he sounds like the sort who would love a good party. Let’s go and get him.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Izuna is a stone wall. Tobirama gets drunk.

With her arm still firmly linked through his to prevent any escape attempts, Touka steers him in the direction of his house. Mizoma, who has been sitting on top of a games booth someone set up, jumps down and runs after them, belly wagging. He’s the first into the house, though when he smells the foxes draped over Izuna he veers sharply away and tries to pretend he’s not interested.

Izuna looks up warily. “Tobirama, is something wrong?”

“In a sense. My cousin wants you to come to the party and gossip with her friends. Sorry, I mean _further diplomatic relations._ Izuna-san, my cousin Touka. Touka, Uchiha Izuna, clan heir.”

“I wouldn’t want to bring down the mood,” says Izuna. “Or have anyone shout at me or try to kill me. You know.”

“What, don’t trust us? We’re the two best fighters in the clan now that Hashirama’s off doing whatever he’s doing with Madara.” His face is neutral, impassive, and she raises her eyebrows. “You don’t trust _me_.”

“I don’t know you,” says Izuna. Tobirama is struck by how different his demeanor is when he has his guard up and full control of his mind. He acts like Tobirama, who has occasionally overheard people calling him ‘the wall of ice,’ and now that he has a chance to observe it in action he’s a little impressed. “After finding out firsthand that at the very least four of you want me dead, I prefer to keep company with the ones I’m pretty sure don’t.” He turns back to his scroll in a clear gesture of dismissal.

Touka elbows Tobirama _hard_ in the ribs. “My cousin wishes you to reconsider,” says Tobirama flatly, glaring at her. “She’d like me to assure you that I am more than capable of protecting you, especially given the fact that my mere presence should discourage assassins. Feel free to refuse.”

Izuna looks half amused, half irritated when he looks up. “Are you trying to convince me or not?”

“I believe you should have all the facts at your disposal. And I don’t really want to fight Touka when she’s drunk.”

“You think I can’t take you, Tobi? I’m not even drunk, I’m barely tipsy!”

“If it prevents a fight, I suppose I’ll go,” says Izuna with a sigh. “But I reserve the right to leave at any time, and Tobirama will need to accompany me home. In case of assassins.” Double or nothing; he’s playing dirty. Tobirama approves, not least because it might get _him_ out of staying at the party.

When they finally make it to the table where Touka’s friends are sitting, all three watch Izuna surreptitiously. Izuna doesn’t offer any introduction, and neither does Touka, but they must know who he is. As they make room for him on the bench by the wall, Sekki fills a cup of sake and pushes it toward him as a gesture of welcome. When he hesitates to pick it up, Tobirama takes it and drinks it, then holds it out to Sekki to refill. She rolls her eyes but doesn’t comment.

“Anyway, Touka, we were talking about what my clan will make of this treaty. I think if we send Ume to harass Ashina-oji he’d give in and send a diplomat to the Uchiha. A treaty with the Senju’s as good as a treaty with the Uzumaki anyway.” Her eyes flicker toward Izuna, who is doing his best impression of a glacier, slowly sipping his sake. She apparently decides not to ask his opinion on it.

“I said Ume could harass anyone into anything,” says Tarou. “Don’t tell her I said that, she’d beat my ass for calling it _harassing_.”

Touka holds out a cup for Sekki to fill and gives it to Tobirama, who takes it but doesn’t drink. If he can get away without drinking any more, he will. “Yeah, that seems like a good plan. He’s a little stern but for a geezer he’s pretty into peace. Just make sure Ume comes back, I’ll miss her seals and her weird fucking fighting style if she leaves us.”

“She always says she’s been thinking of going back home,” says Sekki, and Touka leans across the table to swat her.

“We might get someone new,” points out Hirama. “I’m always up for meeting more Uzumaki.”

“Then go live on the Isle of Whirlpools, don’t try to make Ume leave.”

Tobirama, uninterested in baseless speculation, watches Izuna instead for signs of anxiety. The stony façade is very good; even he can’t tell very much about what Izuna might be thinking. It reminds him that he truly hasn’t known Izuna for very long at all, which makes it a little mystifying how much Izuna seems to let his guard down around him. Surely the one time he healed Izuna instead of killing him doesn’t count for _that_ much. The time he took a sword for Izuna might count for a little more.

Sekki, who is now noticeably drunk and seems to have declared herself keeper of the sake, lifts Tobirama’s cup to his lips so that he has no choice but to drink. She’s flushed and laughing, and he’s not sure she won’t spill it on him if he doesn’t drink. So he does. “Get him drunk! Get him drunk!” Tarou and Touka are chanting, and Sekki refills his cup. This time she gets half of it into his mouth and the rest on his yukata.

He and Izuna stand up almost at the same time. “Touka-san,” says Izuna coldly, with a shallow bow. “I need to borrow your cousin to escort me home. If you’ll excuse us.” A chorus of disappointed groans follows them, but none of them seem to be willing to get up. Izuna’s grip on Tobirama’s wrist is tight, and doesn’t relax even a little until they’re a few meters from his house.

“Those four are appalling,” he says. His stiff posture has relaxed into a tired slouch. “Why are you friends with them?”

“That is why I avoid parties,” says Tobirama. He takes great care to speak clearly. “They’re tolerable when they’re not drunk, but Touka doesn’t seem to have any idea of how she ought to behave when propriety…” he frowns, confused, trying to remember where his sentence was going.

“They _did_ get you drunk,” says Izuna despairingly. “I should have tried harder to get you out of it. No good man would leave a friend in need like that.”

“It’s all right,” says Tobirama. The world spins for a moment and he has to stand very still. “Not your fault. Touka… I’ve never been drunk before, and I never intend to again. I really don’t like not being in control of my own mind.”

“You’ve really never been drunk before?” Izuna gives up on Tobirama’s dignity and puts Tobirama’s arm over his shoulders.

“I’ve never had a reason to. This is the first party I’ve stayed at for more than ten minutes.”

Izuna deposits him on the porch to take his shoes off. “But you didn’t look that different from normal… You’re really that uncomfortable even when someone’s not pouring sake on you?”

“If you adopt that glacier face when you feel that way, why do you think I do it?” Tobirama mumbles. He accepts Izuna’s hand to help him up.

“Sober Tobirama really wouldn’t thank me for trying to get information out of you,” says Izuna, “but alcohol seriously works like a truth serum on you. It’s so tempting.”

“I wouldn’t thank you for it either.” Tobirama sways, and Izuna catches him. “But thank you for making sure I don’t fall over.”

“My pleasure. Why is it you’re so uncomfortable all the time then, even in your own village? Heaven knows I at least know how to party when I’m with my kin.”

“Not like them,” Tobirama sighs. “They don’t have the responsibilities as me, they… understand those things.  Who’s got time to pretend to be human when it won’t fool anyone?”

“That’s got to be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” Izuna helps him lay down on his side. “You must be starving, but the way I see it you’re less likely to throw up in your bed if I don’t feed you. So just go to sleep for now.” Tobirama, eyes closed, gets a brief impression of fingers smoothing his hair away from his face before he falls asleep.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tobirama is an emotional _disaster_ ; Izuna and Madara are easily embarrassed.

He wakes up the next morning with a pounding headache and almost immediately tries to press healing chakra into his skull. It takes longer than it should, because he can barely concentrate, but eventually he gets it down to a manageable level and stumbles upright to find water. His head is spinning a little. He’s in the process of trying to bring to mind what happened last night when someone presses a cup into his hand. He sniffs it suspiciously, finds that it’s water, and drinks it quickly. It might be the best thing he’s ever tasted.

“Soooo… how much of last night do you remember?” asks Izuna. “I made you some rice.”

Tobirama accepts the rice, because he’s very hungry, and says, “I’m still trying to remember. Touka tried to get me drunk and she made you come along.”

“Touka _succeeded_ in getting you drunk. I got you back home but you were kind of. More willing to share your feelings than normal?”

Izuna looks nervous, though Tobirama isn’t sure why. “What did I say?”

“I knew honesty wasn’t the best policy,” mumbles Izuna, scooping rice into another bowl.

“Izuna.” Izuna looks a little surprised, and Tobirama realizes he’s dropped the honorific. “I promise you that I don’t have any… feelings that I will be angry at _you_ for finding out by accident.” He doesn’t even have any secrets, hasn’t since he killed Koima. What could Izuna possibly be embarrassed about?

Izuna ducks his head and starts shoveling rice into his mouth. After swallowing far too much at once he says, “It was about how you don’t fit in with your clan and don’t think you can—how did you put it?— _fool_ anyone into thinking of you as a human.”

Oh. That. Tobirama sighs. “It’s not really very important. I don’t need friends in order to run the clan efficiently.”

“But don’t you _want_ friends?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he says, studying his rice with more concentration than necessary. He wishes Izuna would drop this.

“What, you’re saying you’ve never had a friend? What about Mito and Hashirama? What about your rude cousin?”

“I said it’s not important.”

“Am _I_ your friend?”

“I honestly don’t know what the criteria are,” Tobirama snaps, “so I couldn’t tell you.”

There’s a pause, during which Tobirama finishes half his bowl. Then Izuna says, “Fine. Then I get to decide, and I say we are friends. And I think you do a passable job of imitating a human, too.”

Tobirama snorts. “How flattering. Oh, I don’t think I got a chance to tell you yesterday, but the elders sent back our final draft and approved it.”

Izuna gracefully accepts the change of subject. “Much like the Uchiha elders, they take absolutely forever to decide on anything. The meeting is tomorrow, and they just barely gave us the go-ahead? Sometimes I think they just consider council meetings a kind of social circle…” Izuna doesn’t try to bring it up again, just goes over their talking points and makes jokes. It’s probably intended to get Tobirama to relax, which he finds amusing rather than insulting.

The next day they go to the peace talks, which are taking place in a tent that has been set up by the river. Hashirama is sitting at the table, alert and smiling. Madara looks like he always does, surly and mistrustful, and Tobirama suppresses the urge to pin his hands to the table with a knife as a precautionary measure. He didn’t actually bring a knife, of course, because that would be very poor etiquette indeed, but he could always make do… He turns his mind away from knives and takes a seat opposite Madara, bowing his head respectfully. Izuna sits across from Hashirama and Mito across from an unfamiliar Uchiha.

“So! Everyone’s here, and we can finally start—” Hashirama, vibrating with energy, nearly rises in his excitement, but Madara interrupts him.

“Until you become de facto head of a clan, Hashirama, don’t think to start proceedings on your own.”

“I literally am a clan head, Madara, did you notice?”

“You’re a hostage, not a clan head,” Madara hisses, as if the Senju representatives have any chance of not hearing him. “Now shut up, this is supposed to be serious.”

This is not what Tobirama expected their relationship to be like, even given what he saw of their interactions four years ago. They really are acting like twelve-year-olds. “In that case, perhaps I can start this meeting with an exchange of proposals.” Mito hands him the final scroll they wrote last night, and he places it in the middle of the table. Madara holds out his own scroll, and takes theirs. Then Mito and Izuna lean in to read it, and there’s silence except for Hashirama’s excited humming.

“I seem to remember you, Madara-san, explicitly saying that this would be a peace treaty only, not an alliance.” Tobirama raises his eyebrows at the scroll. “I’m certain I would have remembered if you suggested jointly founding a village.”

Madara’s face and ears have gone faintly red. “Yes, well, things change in the course of negotiations. I have come to believe that our clans will be stronger united—” He cuts himself off to glare at Izuna, who is trying very hard not to laugh. “ _Yes_ , brother? Did you have something to say?” The unknown Uchiha sighs and looks up toward the roof of the tent as if she is praying.

“Nothing at all,” says Izuna in a slightly strangled voice. He takes a breath. “No, actually, I think a joint village is a good idea. We’re the two strongest clans in Fire Country, and if we united no-one would ever dare attack us. The village would be very safe. Hypothetically.”

“And if the strongest clans in Lightning Country united?” asks Tobirama. “Or in Water Country? I know for a fact they’d dare to attack us.”

“Have you ever _been_ to Water Country?” asks Madara scornfully. “No two clans there would ever unite. And what reason would they have to attack us?”

“What reason did any of us have to attack each other?” Hashirama stands, cutting off the argument. “And yet if we, who have been at war for ten generations, can make peace, then together we can make peace with anyone.”

“That aside for a moment,” says Mito, “the Senju haven’t gotten approval from their elders yet, because the idea is only now being introduced. I think they will approve it, with some convincing, but there is a bigger problem.”

Hashirama sits down (with a tug on the hem of his haori from Madara). “What problem?”

Izuna glances at Mito and answers for her. “Even I don’t really trust any of the Senju yet, except Tobirama, and I’ve spent enough time in their compound to know that most of them probably don’t want to kill me.” Madara snorts, and Tobirama wonders if Izuna has told him about the assassination attempt. He would guess not, because Uchiha Madara doesn’t need any more reasons to distrust the Senju. “I also know that every Uchiha I’ve talked to would rather stay far away from the Senju, and I bet it’s the same on their side. How are we going to convince a thousand people who have been trying to kill each other their whole lives that it’s suddenly the done thing to be neighbors and come over to each other’s houses for tea?”

Madara frowns deeply, but Hashirama’s face brightens, and he puts a hand on Madara’s shoulder. “Well, you and Tobirama trust each other. Madara and I trust each other. What if we just had families from each clan host people from the other clan?”

“ _Carefully picked_ hosts and guests,” says Tobirama. “Because if the guests aren’t treated like family, they will only find more reasons for suspicion and hostility. You, brother, have been very fortunate in your choice of host. You and Madara-san already knew and liked each other.” He’s a little exasperated to see Madara flush again. “I was very lucky as well, that Izuna-san is as even-tempered and forgiving as he is.” Izuna beams at him… and he understands Madara a little. He takes care to show nothing on his face.

“Oh, Tobirama,” says his brother suddenly, “we have to start making a list! I can already think of two families off the top of my head who would be perfect—”

“Senju-san,” says the unknown Uchiha reprovingly. “Did you even read any of their proposals? This is still a peace conference.”

“Sorry, Chie-san. I’ll keep reading.” He ducks his head to look at the scroll, which got a little crumpled in his excitement. Mito lets out a quiet breath of laughter on Tobirama’s left, and turns back to the scroll from Madara.


	20. Chapter 20

Most of Mito and Tobirama’s proposals concern the two clans’ other allies and how they will be affected, as well as trade agreements. Most of Madara’s proposals concern border placement and demilitarization, which is only to be expected.

After they agree on the other terms Hashirama pulls Tobirama aside and starts listing people off immediately. He looks at Tobirama expectantly, as if waiting for his brother to produce a scroll, brush, and ink, but when Tobirama just looks at him he pouts and goes to beg them off Uchiha Chie instead. Tobirama does find it an interesting challenge to figure out who is best suited as a host and who as a guest, but he is nowhere near as good as Hashirama, simply because he doesn’t know as many Senju. On the other side of the tent, Izuna and Madara are similarly occupied.

They go home to get approval from the elders, and this time Izuna comes to the meeting. There’s a good amount of shouting, but one of the elders, Yosuke, is on the host list, so Tobirama convinces them to let him try it and report back before reaching a final decision. Then he, Mito, and Izuna go home to send Madara a letter. Mizoma, who is angry at being left home all day, jumps onto Tobirama’s shoulders and sits there, sulking and digging in his claws, while Tobirama tries to write.

“It’ll be even harder to convince anyone to go and stay with the Uchiha,” says Izuna. “Is there really anyone that optimistic here? Besides you, of course. I _still_ can’t believe you’re the most optimistic Senju in the village.”

“We’ll visit the candidates tonight,” says Tobirama.

The first is a retired shinobi, a woman with a permanent limp and a sharp tongue. “Me?” she says, and laughs. “You’re trusting me to keep my temper in a compound full of Uchiha? You _do_ know how many I’ve killed.”

“Are you eager to kill more?” asks Tobirama. Izuna’s face has closed off as if he is remembering how many Senju he has personally killed. Or perhaps he’s remembering that half of the people in this compound have likewise murdered at least one of his kin.

“Not at all. I’d rather kick their asses at shogi, to be perfectly honest. And hey, if I die you don’t lose a good fighter. Win-win.”

The next two are ten-year-old twins. Because they had just started their training when Hashirama took over the clan, they have never seen battle at all. They’re well-loved by everyone who knows them for their sunny personalities, and Tobirama thinks that most Uchiha will be entirely charmed by them as well.

“Do we have to leave home?” asks Oma, fiddling with her belt. “I’ll miss Mama.”

“You’ll come back,” Izuna tells her. “The reason is so you can learn about the Uchiha clan and so they can learn about you. It will only be a couple of weeks, and your mother can visit you.”

“It’ll be cool,” says Uzuma. “It’ll be like going on a mission, a diplomatic mission that holds the fate of the world in the balance!” He sees his sister’s face and adds, “Not really. I’m just playing pretend, it won’t be _that_ much pressure. Come on, Momo, it’ll be really fun.”

“As long as Mama can visit, I don’t care,” declares Oma. And the two of them almost immediately get distracted by Mizoma.

The fourth is Tobirama’s cousin Tamaki, who has to promise not to flirt with any Uchiha until he’s sure he won’t make them uncomfortable. The fifth is a grandmother who lives in an enormous house with her three children’s families, with a habit of taking care of everyone she meets. She promises to at least _try_ extending that habit to the clan that killed her third son not three weeks ago. Izuna is nearly moved to tears, speaking to her.

The sixth is Touka, who laughs at him when he asks her. “Me, seriously? Someone’s going to get murdered within the first five minutes, and even if they start the fight it won’t be me.” Her eyes flick to Izuna, who is staring coldly at a point several meters behind her. “Why on earth would you think I’d be a good choice?”

“I trust you to be a good person,” says Tobirama. “You _do_ understand politeness when you wish to, you’re charismatic, and you’re well known even by the Uchiha. If they believe you are human and sympathetic, they’ll believe it about anyone.”

Touka smiles wickedly. “Aw, my baby cousin thinks I’m charismatic and polite. Well, Tobi, I’ll do my best not to kill anyone.”

As they leave, Tobirama murmurs to Izuna, “I don’t know what has happened to her since puberty. She never allows herself to be seen taking anything seriously any more. She was very different, once.”

“It sometimes happens,” says Izuna. He still looks unhappy just to have been in the same room as her. “People deal with being a killer in different ways. Making life a joke sometimes makes it hurt less. I’m… sorry to do this, but I’d like to go home for the night. I’m tired, and somehow this hasn’t made me all that hopeful. They believe they’ll be okay, but none of them really seem invested in making this work. They don’t know why they’re doing it.”

“I would say that’s all to the good,” Tobirama corrects him. “If they were trying to be something they were not out of desperation for peace, the relationships they built with their hosts would ring false.”

Izuna shrugs. He doesn’t seem to be in the mood to discuss it any more. But when they get home and start making dinner he stands so close that his arm keeps brushing Tobirama’s as he chops vegetables; later, when they sit up reading, he leans against Tobirama’s back as a solid, warm pressure. Tobirama absolutely does not understand him. Maybe it’s an Uchiha thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did y’all know that Izuna’s birthday is 9 days before Tobirama’s? I’m imagining Izuna being excited to be the same age as Tobirama for 9 whole days. On the other hand, Tobirama probably doesn’t know when his own birthday is and some time around the equinox he suddenly goes “oh I’m 18” and Izuna’s like ???? SINCE WHEN
> 
> In conclusion they have about the same emotional maturity so it doesn’t matter very much.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about this, I'm a couple hours late. have some gay bullshit as compensation.

Within a week the two clans exchange guests. Tobirama is there as an escort, and he’s encouraged to see some of the Uchiha children waving at the Senju party, several of whom wave back. At the north gate the host families are waiting, and Izuna helps him distribute the guests among them. He tells them to come to him or Izuna with any problems, and then they all separate to their respective homes. Most of Tobirama’s time that week is spent catching up on administrative work and sparring with Izuna, who says he’s been sitting idle too long but is still barely willing to speak to any other Senju.

“As a representative of the Uchiha clan and the prototypical guest,” Tobirama observes, “you’re setting a rather bad example. Shouldn’t you be making friends among the Senju?”

“I find it rather hard to get over the fact that some of them tried to kill me.” _Them_ , Tobirama notes, not _you_. It seems he doesn’t quite qualify as a Senju. A familiar sentiment. “So I’m paranoid. It’s helped me survive this far.”

“You’ll need different ways of surviving in peacetime,” Tobirama says. He has thought about this extensively, though most of his thinking was done when he was about ten and first wondering why adults couldn’t keep a peace treaty when their lives depended on it. “In order to make peace, we all have to let go of our ability to make war. To some extent, anyway—I’m sure we’ll still be taking missions from merchants and the like. But if everyone is constantly prepared for war, it will happen again, sooner or later.”

Izuna slumps against the trunk of a tree. “I know! I know. I’m trying to get my head in order. But it’s not like I can just stop being afraid when they look at me.”

“I would propose a solution, but you have much better social and self-awareness than I do.”

“Hah. That’s true. I guess… the solution is to be afraid and still talk to them. It’s because I don’t know them that they scare me. I only have to know them well enough to believe they aren’t secretly plotting to murder me.” Very sensible, to conquer a fear of the unknown by knowing it. It’s the principle behind the hosting plan, after all.

“Next market day, you’ll be the one negotiating for our food. Those Senju are civilians, anyway, so there’s no need to be afraid. And I will see if I can arrange for you to share a meal with one of the host families.”

“Hmm.” Izuna stands up again. “Are you up for another round? I want to see if I can figure out how to counter hiraishin.” Izuna has yet to speak willingly to another Senju—except for Hashirama—but he trusts Tobirama to throw a knife at him repeatedly. Strange priorities.

He has activated his sharingan, waiting, and Tobirama still finds it unnerving. His instinct is to look away, to vanish and find a concealed spot to mount an ambush. It’s hard to make himself look into Izuna’s eyes and nod that he’s ready. He throws his marked kunai far to the right , flickers to catch it, and then immediately throws it again so he can teleport behind Izuna. Izuna seems to follow the knife easily with his eyes, but is only half turned to meet Tobirama by the time he gets there. He doesn’t quite manage to block Tobirama’s open palm attack. “Again,” he says, wheezing slightly. “I think if I just get used to fighting a faster opponent at close range I’ll be fine.”

Tobirama retreats a few meters. “All right. If you catch my kunai—” he throws it at Izuna, who moves to catch it. Just before he does, Tobirama teleports there and strikes him again.

He doubles over, leaning on his knees and dropping the kunai. “Ugh. I’ve gotten so rusty in taijutsu. It’s been so long since I had to fight without a sword. How about we try without the space-time ninjutsu, to make it a little more even? Are you still faster?”

Without space-time ninjutsu, Izuna is better, though Tobirama suspects the contest would shift back in his favor if Izuna weren’t using sharingan. He barely manages to block most of Izuna’s strikes, and any time he has the space to attack Izuna easily evades. Tobirama ends up pinned with a knee on his chest and a hand not quite wrapped around his neck.

Izuna, above him, is grinning, proud of taking him down. Inanely, Tobirama notices the way his hair hangs around his face, so long that it should make it hard for him to see. There’s a sheen of sweat on his face and arms, and his hand at the base of Tobirama’s throat is very warm. “Yield?” he says. His eyes have relaxed to black in his confidence.

Tobirama stares up at him for a moment, dazed by his closeness, and then collects himself and says, “This is an ineffective hold if you want to keep your opponent from retaliating. One of my hands and both of my legs are free.” He uses his free hand to shove Izuna’s knee off his chest, unbalancing him so that Tobirama can roll and pin him much more effectively. “Like so.”

“I _could_ have killed you, so it doesn’t matter whether the hold was effective,” protests Izuna. His eyes flash red for a moment, making Tobirama feel like he’s being pierced by Izuna’s stare. He falters, and his grip on Izuna’s wrists loosens, allowing Izuna to sit up and smile at him from only a few centimeters away. To Tobirama’s horror, he feels his face heating up. “Let’s call it a draw.” There is a long pause, during which Izuna slowly turns red as well. He leans back onto his elbows, putting distance between them again. “Um, you’ll have to get up first.”

Instead of standing, Tobirama teleports directly to his marked kunai and picks it up, stowing it in his weapons pouch. What on earth was _that_? “I have some clerical work to catch up on, so I’ll have to leave you here for the moment. Mizoma, come on.”

Because he never fails to watch his surroundings, Tobirama can feel the confused flux of Izuna’s chakra behind him as he walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have you ever touched someone and your heart starts beating really hard because no-one ever touches you and you get confused and upset about it


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did I say gay bullshit? I meant gay, ANGSTY bullshit.

As expected, the guests do not entirely get along with their hosts. Today, an Uchiha has come to complain that his host family is ‘giving him funny looks.’ When Izuna investigates, it turns out that the children just think his pale skin and blue-black hair look strange, and have been trying to work up the courage to ask to touch his hair. Bemused, he allows it, and when he can’t quite fight a smile Tobirama is satisfied enough.

Izuna visits all the host families over the course of a week, using the meals he sits in on to observe their growing relationships. He comes back looking hopeful. “They tell jokes and tease each other,” he says. “We did choose the friendliest ones for a reason. It’s… it’s very good.” Nonetheless, almost all the Uchiha here have been insulted or threatened on the street. They’ve been unfailingly polite, but it shakes both them and their hosts.

“And how are the Senju guests in the Uchiha compound?” Tobirama chooses to get all his news from Madara, via Izuna, so that he won’t have to read a letter from his brother.

“Well, they were having a hard time leaving their host houses—the rest of the Uchiha are being assholes about it—but their hosts have been defending them and Madara thinks it’s getting better. You should see how frustrated he is, he calls them all kinds of really inventive names.” Izuna grins to himself. “Oh, and Hashirama too. I’d say they’re getting along like a house on fire. Madara’s even madder that Hashirama’s so good at winning people over. Half the clan loves him. I think my poor brother is put out that someone’s more popular than him.”

“I imagine you have always been more popular than him,” Tobirama says, marking down another expense on his scroll. He doesn’t get as much work done when he lets Izuna sit with him, but sometimes it’s better not to let thoughts fill his head.

“Do you think so?” says Izuna, laughing. “More popular than tsun-tsun Madara? Who would believe it?” Tobirama allows himself to roll his eyes, and Izuna nudges him with his shoulder. “Still, thanks. It’s nice to know you do acknowledge how charismatic I am.”

Tobirama can’t help but wonder what will happen when peace comes and Izuna reunites with his clan. He _is_ charismatic when he wants to be. He understands people in a way Tobirama does not; he enjoys parties and is probably very good at diplomacy when his brother isn’t involved. He will certainly have no need to spend time with Tobirama. It’s best that Tobirama starts building back up the walls between them now. Or will that jeopardize the village and the peace? Perhaps if he’s subtle about it—

Izuna’s thumb smooths over Tobirama’s forehead, and taps him gently between the eyes. “Stop frowning. You’ll get a headache.” Tobirama looks sideways at him, startled and a little uneasy. “I know you weren’t thinking about math just now. You look peaceful when you do math.”

“It’s not important.” He turns his focus back to his finances.

“Yeah, and we both know exactly what _not important_ means,” says Izuna. He doesn’t sound quite so amused now.

“It means exactly what it sounds like,” says Tobirama sharply. “I do not speak in code, Izuna-san.”

There’s a brief, tense silence, and then Izuna mutters, “Are you angry at me?”

“What?”

“I thought you stopped calling me _Izuna-san_. And you sound like you’re angry because I asked about… whatever it is. I won’t ask any more.”

Tobirama is briefly torn between the impulse to leave without a word and the bone-deep compulsion to clear up miscommunications. Because he is in control of his own mind, he squashes the former. “I’m not angry at you. I’m making myself ready for when you leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Izuna frowns. “Except to the new village, once we build it.”

He really is going to have to spell it out. “I had assumed that once you were in an environment that didn’t constantly induce anxiety and had your choice of companions, you wouldn’t—”

“Sound sad about it, or something!” says Izuna. Tobirama, surprised by his sudden loudness, cuts himself off. “Sound like—like you’d care if I stopped talking to you, like you’d care if you didn’t have any friends! Sound like you care about _yourself_!”

Tobirama realizes that the burning in his gut is fear. He is afraid, and he doesn’t know why. “If such a misrepresentation would make you feel better, Izuna-san—”

“Shove it, Tobirama.” Izuna stands and starts to pace, agitated. “Don’t pretend you don’t have emotions. Don’t pretend you don’t speak extra formally when you’re upset, and don’t pretend you weren’t being petty just now. It’s okay to be scared, but I won’t leave you just because I have other friends who I trust not to murder me. And if you preemptively start pushing me away because you think it’s more _efficient_ to hurt yourself or something, I’m just going to annoy you until you give in and be my friend again. So don’t bother.”

Tobirama does not ask _Why? Why do you care?_ because he’s not a child. He wants to. Instead, he lowers his eyes to the paper and tries to remember how much they paid for lumber this month. He stares at the blank column, his mind too scattered to recall.

“I don’t know what to do,” says Izuna finally. He’s on the other side of the room when Tobirama glances up, looking away into the back garden. “I don’t know how to prove that I’m not lying when I say I care about you.”

“It would be easier if you didn’t. I think I liked my life better when I didn’t have a friend.” He doesn’t know if it’s true. He has no idea how to tell. It was certainly _simpler_. But he does feel regret for the defeated slump of Izuna’s shoulders, leaning against the doorway like he suddenly lacks the energy to stand.

Izuna walks out silently, his chakra damped almost to nothing. He doesn’t say where he’s going, but perhaps Tobirama no longer has the right to ask. They aren’t friends. Tobirama is simply his host. He turns back to his sums, feeling empty.

Emptiness is good. Safe. It’s something to build walls around.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here ends part 2.


	23. Part III

When they gather all the Senju, at the end of the month, to ask for public opinion on the combined village, about half are cautiously in favor. Gossip has spread from the host families (about ten per cent of families are hosts), all of whom vocally support the idea. The rest of the village, a large minority, ranges from deeply suspicious to those who simply don’t want to move house. It takes another month of meetings with family heads to convince enough of them, and even then there are a few who would rather become nomads or stay in an empty compound than share a village with the Uchiha. It’s victory enough that they haven’t killed anyone.

Tobirama intends to survey nearby neutral territory for a good location, but Hashirama and Madara have apparently known exactly where they want to build a village for six years. It _is_ a good choice; the village will lie at the bottom of a cliff for better defense, and though it’s surrounded by dense forest the plan is to clear the trees near the wall to make ambushes more difficult.

There are a few allied clans that are interested in joining, too; the Senju have the Shimura and Sarutobi clans already, and the Uchiha a northern clan called Aburame that Tobirama has never seen—they must be trading partners only. It brings the expected population of the combined village to two and a half thousand people, which is larger than he imagined. And they’ll have to design for the village to grow, because it’s not impossible that half the clans in Fire Country will want to join, as well as a good number of shinobi families and unaffiliated farmers and merchants. He quickly estimates their numbers, and realizes that it will be very difficult to build a wall any time soon if they don’t want the village extending beyond it. It’s not unlikely that eight thousand people will want to live in the village, and it’s going to be a truly daunting task for any clan head who is used to providing for one tenth that number.

It’s fortunate that Tobirama was already planning to cut off his social life (such that it was) entirely, because he has a _lot_ of work to do. When he’s not in a meeting, he’s obliged to do his work in plain view so he can be easily found if anyone needs him. He very much dislikes having to work in public spaces with the distractions of noise and movement, but it can’t be helped. He longs for the time when he worked only for one clan, and was able to do it by the river in silence.

Mizoma still keeps him company, and seems to be able to detect when he is under a lot of stress. The cat lies on his desk most of the time, collecting pets from passersby, and occasionally gets up to tear around outside before settling himself across Tobirama’s shoulders, purring. It’s not quite dignified to work with a cat wrapped around his neck, but Tobirama has enough dignity for any two normal people. Certainly no-one dares to laugh.

Izuna, who previously occupied his time with training, sangaku, and the occasional chore, is now responsible for coordinating and mediating interclan discussions. He’s excellent at it, and he works well with Mito, the other head of diplomacy. Most importantly, it keeps both of them far away from Tobirama so that he doesn’t have to work with anyone he has a personal relationship with, except for his occasional meetings with Hashirama.

Another month passes by in a blur of meetings and countless logistical calculations, and Tobirama finds himself standing in front of the new village’s government building, a squat tower that took only three days to build between the Shimura clan’s metallurgical expertise and Hashirama’s wood release. The other clan heads are here to claim land for when construction starts. As the founding clans, Hashirama insisted that the Uchiha and Senju would take the land closest to the government building, their districts directly abutting each other. Shimura Senzou, Aburame Shin, and Sarutobi Daisen are crouched over a map with sticks of charcoal, arguing over what they believe to be the best land. Izuna is watching, looking like he would intervene to mediate if it weren’t for Madara’s hand on his shoulder. Hashirama, on the other hand, is blissfully ignoring them, staring up at the trees around them with a smile on his face.

“It’s so beautiful here, brother,” he murmurs.

“The forest here looks just like the forest everywhere else,” says Tobirama.

“Yes, and the forest everywhere else is also beautiful. No, what I meant is that it’s beautiful because there’s so much promise. Possibility. _Hope_.” When Tobirama makes a noncommittal noise, Hashirama continues. “This is going to be the place where war ends. Here, we’ll teach children things that can’t be used to kill anyone! Here people will be _safe_.”

“Anything can be used to kill someone,” says Tobirama. Hashirama’s head and shoulders hunch beside him, and he can feel Hashirama’s chakra darkening to purple. “But I do take your point. It’s a very attractive idea, knowledge for its own sake.”

“I knew you’d think so,” says Hashirama, beaming again. “Imagine you as a teacher! I really don’t know how that would work out…”

Tobirama has never interacted much with children, except when he was one. He tends to treat them like adults who don’t know very much, and as far as he can tell they appreciate it. He can imagine himself passing knowledge to children, but that’s not really teaching. Any child who learns differently than he does—and realistically, that’s almost all of them—he’ll have no clue how to teach. So he just says, “Hmm,” and lets Hashirama interpret that as he will.

Hashirama needs no real encouragement, so he conducts the entire conversation by himself.  Tobirama watches the other clan heads instead of paying attention to him. They seem to have finally made a decision, so when they stand up Tobirama goes to look at the map. “We’ll have a team of surveyors put temporary markers down,” he tells them. “You’ll all need to approve them, but I was thinking a mix of people from all of your clans. You should choose.” They nod and start writing down their ideas.

It’s not much of a village, even after the three smaller clans start building their compounds, until the farmers, merchants, and craftsmen start to move into the empty space between them. Then, it truly starts to look like a place where people live rather than a military installation.

Hashirama builds a large house in the Senju compound where he, Tobirama, and Mito can live together. Tobirama hates it, because the house that’s _his_ is standing abandoned twenty kilometers to the east. It’s a beautiful house that has belonged to the clan head for generations, and Tobirama knows every inch of it. The new house makes him feel uncomfortable and unmoored. Hashirama seems to love it; he and Mito are happy to bring everyone they know to show it off, but Tobirama ends up spending most of his time in the government building.

Three days after he stops coming home, Hashirama finds him sleeping on his desk and wakes him up by shouting at him. Disoriented, Tobirama wonders if he’s dreaming, blinking confusedly at his brother until Hashirama starts shaking him. “Tobirama! Can you even hear me? Are you all right?”

“What? I was sleeping.”

“Why were you sleeping in the government building? You have a bed! It’s right next to mine, so I know you haven’t been using it.”

Tobirama sits up properly, resigned to waking up. By his elbow, Mizoma chirrs sleepily and blinks up at Hashirama. “I don’t like the new house. I feel more comfortable here.”

“That’s probably some kind of deeply significant metaphor,” Hashirama mutters. “If you don’t like it, you know I can just change it! It only took me a day to build! Just tell me what you don’t like.”

“First, the location. Second, the entire house. Third, the fact that I have to live in it. Let me go back to sleep.”

“You miss our old house.” Tobirama doesn’t reply, because the answer is obvious. “Tobirama, we can’t have everything we used to have. Nothing is going to be exactly the same. That’s the number one thing about founding a village with multiple clans. You knew that.”

He had known, intellectually, of course. It’s not at all the same as living it.

When Tobirama continues not to speak, Hashirama sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “You’ll also never get used to it if you pretend it’s not happening. You’re going to sleep in your bed if I have to force you.”

“You can’t actually force me to sleep,” says Tobirama, but when his brother pulls him to his feet he doesn’t resist. Hashirama leads him to their house and pushes him down onto his bed and lies down next to him with an arm draped over his shoulder.

“Don’t try anything,” Hashirama says, and seems to drift almost immediately to sleep. Tobirama tries to meditate on his brother’s chakra, and it does calm him. He hasn’t slept with his brother for too long. Mizoma is purring. Maybe it will be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sometimes it really hits me that Tobirama is 17 and has PTSD and just really wants things to be familiar and safe. ouch.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which Mito does something rather heterosexual

There’s a letter addressed to Tobirama and pinned to one of the posts of the house. Hashirama brings it in, excited that someone is writing to his brother, but Tobirama recognizes it immediately as Izuna’s handwriting. He wonders if something is wrong. Why would Izuna write to him, given that his and Madara’s house is within easy walking distance? He picks off the wax and opens it.

_Hi, Tobirama. Or should I call you Senju-san? I don’t really know where we stand, which is why I wrote instead of coming to see you. I hope you’re doing well. I’m happy to live with my own family again; any house without Madara in it will always seem too quiet, and I also missed my cousin Tsumiki and her daughters. I miss you too, though. Nobody knows how to be quiet like you do, and sometimes I need that. Madara’s thinking of inviting your household for dinner tomorrow, and I hope you come, even if you’re awkward and dour. We’ve been trying to design a shrine for the Uchiha district as well as one for the whole village. Maybe you’ll be willing to take a look at it, even if you don’t like shrines or aesthetics. You don’t have to write back but I hope you do. –Ken_

He signed it with a drawing of his favorite sword. Izuna is quite a good artist, from the sketches of Mizoma Tobirama has seen. He’s certainly better suited than Tobirama to design shrines, but this must be his idea of ‘annoying Tobirama until he decides to be friends again.’ It’s shockingly polite, for Izuna.

“Well?” asks Hashirama. “It must be good news, you look pleased.”

Tobirama wipes all expression from his face. “Madara-san is inviting the three of us to dinner tomorrow.”

“That’s not a letter from Madara—” Hashirama tries to read it over Tobirama’s shoulder, and when Tobirama folds it up he tries to grab it. “Who’s it from? Are you smiling because it’s from Izuna?”

“I don’t smile. You must have been mistaken, brother.”

“You _do_. You smile at Mizoma all the time, and you smile when you get a letter from your best friend. It just doesn’t look like a normal smile because you’re an ice sculpture.”

“I don’t have friends,” he says coldly. “At best I have colleagues. Go and bother Mito.”

“I can’t.” Hashirama pouts, leaning against Tobirama’s shoulder. “She’s busy organizing government stuff. Already! The sun has barely risen! Anyway, you should make some friends. It would be good for you. Oh! Do you want to be in charge of the academy project? Madara would be co-head, but don’t let that stop you, he actually adores children. They just think he’s scary because he doesn’t know how to smile. He’d be a perfect match for you, wouldn’t he?”

“No,” says Tobirama. “He really wouldn’t. But I’m willing to tolerate him if I get input in the academy’s curriculum design.”

Hashirama pounds him on the back. “Excellent! And don’t think I’m letting you get out of dinner tomorrow. I will literally truss you up and drag you there, and it will be horribly awkward and you’ll hate it, so just come on your own.”

Reluctantly, he does. He doesn’t speak, though, unless spoken to, and he keeps it short. Maybe if he’s unpleasant enough they won’t invite him again. Otherwise it’s a charming dinner party. He’s interested to observe Izuna’s cousin (he thinks she’s the same one who was helping him organize the hostage-taking) and her husband and children, who are utterly delighted to meet Mizoma. Everyone is polite and cheerful and optimistic. It makes Tobirama feel a little sick how _much_ he has no way to pretend to be like them.

Izuna watches him all through dinner, which makes him feel uncomfortable for reasons he can’t define. That bothers him too, that he doesn’t understand the effect Izuna has on him. He doesn’t speak a word to Izuna, because Izuna is at least polite enough not to initiate. He does speak briefly to Madara about meeting to start plans for the academy, but no-one mentions the shrines. When they finally make their way home near midnight Hashirama sighs and leans on Tobirama’s shoulder.

“I know you were trying extra hard to act like a stone wall. It wouldn’t kill you to be friendly, you know.”

 _Except in the sense that it would effectively annihilate my personality_ , Tobirama thinks, but doesn’t say out loud. Instead he says, “As long as I am cooperative, I have no need to be friendly.”

Hashirama sighs again, even more loudly and pointedly. “Well, Mito, what did you think? Of Madara’s family?”

“I think of it more as Izuna’s family, at this point,” she says with a quiet laugh. “They’re good people. I like Madara more than I expected. He’s very sarcastic, which is endearing. I wouldn’t send him on diplomatic missions, but I wouldn’t mind getting to know him better either.”

“I’m so glad you like him,” says Hashirama earnestly. “He’s the best friend I’ve ever had, and I hope to bring our families together.”

Mito raises her eyebrows at him, but he just gives her a questioning look. She says, “By bringing our families together, you mean…?”

“Um, nothing like what you’re thinking, whatever that is. I just mean that I want all of us to be happy together.”

Mito gives him a sunny smile, her whole face lighting up with apparently genuine pleasure. “That’s wonderful, Hashirama. I hope he can make us happy too.” Tobirama observed, during dinner, that the number of times she casually touched Madara’s arm increased linearly with how much wine she drank. Since she’s obviously not impaired at all, the only conclusion he can come to is that she has been calculating what is acceptable all night. Perhaps fortunately, she was much too subtle for Madara to gain any insight. Tobirama dreads dining with Madara’s family again, not least because he does not want to watch Mito test the limits of Madara’s obliviousness. He considers telling Hashirama what her goal is so that at least his brother will be informed—but not tonight. Mito won’t thank him for it, and she has plenty of subtle ways of making his life worse. He lets Mito bring the conversation back into neutral territory, no doubt quietly scheming, while he scratches Mizoma, who is riding on his shoulder, under the chin.

When Hashirama gets into bed next to Tobirama, while Mito is busy changing in the next room he whispers, “Do you get the sense that she’s plotting something? She seems awfully… Hmh.”

“What do you think it is she’s plotting?”

Hashirama frowns up at the ceiling. “I couldn’t say. It’s just a feeling.”


	25. Chapter 25

It happens during an academy meeting with Madara and a few representatives from the other clans. As Shimura Yuuho is running through her preliminary curriculum goals a great tremor shakes the ground, and they all look up, startled.

“An earthquake?” asks Yuuho.

Tobirama, who has expanded the reach of his chakra sense, shakes his head. “It’s something else. Something with an unfathomable amount of chakra.” The earth shakes again.

“A bijuu,” says Madara. The rest look at him in confusion. “You must have heard of them! There was one that used to go past the Uchiha village every few years, like it was migrating. An enormous fox with nine tails. Aburame-san, you must have seen it.”

Aburame Shiure shrugs as another boom sends tremors through their bones. “I thought it was a story that Shin-sama’s mother told to make sure the children didn’t wander too far. It does explain why our insects were so upset for no apparent reason. They’re extremely agitated now.” Tobirama recalls that when he first started training his sensor aptitude over a truly long range he felt a huge chakra like this. At the time he thought he was mistaken because he was so new at it. Now, he wonders.

“Its chakra signature is coming closer,” says Tobirama. “I would like to adjourn this meeting for now so I can reconnoiter.”

“Yes,” says Madara. “I’ll come too.”

The others stand, uncertain and uneasy. “I’m going to jump to the north gate,” Tobirama tells Madara. “If you want to come along you’ll get there faster.”

“Hm. Very well.” He lets Tobirama put a hand on his shoulder and teleport both of them to the freestanding gate that will eventually integrate into a wall, but for now just marks the bounds of the village. They both quickly scale a tree, and from there they can see a creature twenty stories tall, with fur of a deep, almost bloody orange. It does look like a fox, but it has long, rabbitlike ears. Its nine tails thump against the ground sporadically as it walks.

“See?” hisses Madara. “I thought it was the same one. This thing destroyed an entire clan in about an hour. It burned their village to the ground and then stomped on it for good measure.”

“Why?” asks Tobirama.

“What?”

“Animals don’t do anything for no reason. If someone is attacked by bees it’s not because bees hate them. It’s probably because they tried to hurt the hive.” Besides, he can sense this thing’s chakra. It’s intelligent.

“Hell if I know. We have to get it out of here.”

The fox’s head turns toward them, mouth open like it’s taking in a scent.

“I can agree with that. But how? If we attack it, it will only get angry. There’s no way we could kill it fast enough to avoid collateral damage.”

“Think it’s susceptible to genjutsu?”

“It’s worth a try.”

The fox sits down, shaking the ground, and looks right at them with its long red tongue lolling out between its teeth. It looks like it’s grinning.

“ **I can hear you, little humans.** ” Its voice is like thunder, and it has strange harmonics that makes it sound like something not of this world. Tobirama’s heart is hammering in his chest.

Madara jumps and nearly falls out of the tree before Tobirama catches the back of his shirt. “It can _talk_?”

“ **I can do more than talk, worm. What a rude reception. If you weren’t so pitiably afraid I’d destroy you just for that.** ”

Madara doesn’t seem to want to speak, for now, or maybe he’s unable to. Keeping his voice steady, Tobirama says, “If you didn’t come to destroy us, why are you here?”

“ **It’s my forest, isn’t it?** ” The fox laughs, low and frightening. From a human, it would sound malevolent. The fox is much more than human. “ **If three thousand humans are gathering together, it’s usually not for a good reason.** ”

“We’re founding a village!” shouts Madara. “If you take issue with _peace_ you can have words with my fan.” Madara doesn’t _have_ his battle fan, which makes it a weak threat as well as a rather ironic one. Neither of them stopped to gather weapons on the way here—not that anything on a human scale would help them against this creature.

“ **I smell astonishingly little malice in your village. You may carry on. Mind you don’t do anything to upset me, hmm?** ” It thumps its tails against the ground, hard enough to make the gate behind them shudder, and turns to go. They watch in silence for a few minutes, until its long strides take it out of sight behind a mountain.

By that time a crowd has gathered at the gate, with Hashirama near the front. “Brother! Madara! What was _that_?”

Madara jumps down to the ground, and Tobirama follows. “A bijuu. The nine-tailed fox. I can’t believe only the Uchiha have heard of it. Apparently it thinks it owns the whole forest.”

“We know,” says Sarutobi Daisen, disheveled. “The whole village could hear it. I don’t know how we _missed_ that thing.”

“Madara-san, are there more of them?” asks Tobirama.

“It’s said there are nine, each with a different number of tails. I don’t think most of them live around here.”

Most of the people in the crowd look shaken. Perhaps, like Tobirama, they’re realizing how much bigger the world is than they thought. Only a tiny fraction of the land where they live has been comprehensively explored. If they didn’t know about nine enormous beasts with chakra to rival the sun, what else could they have missed?

“That thing is dangerous,” says someone, and there are murmurs of agreement. “We have to keep it away, or kill it or capture it or something.”

Perhaps this is what the fox meant when it said that large groups of humans don’t gather for _good_ reasons. “We’ll discuss this in council,” says Tobirama. “Anyone who wishes to make their voice heard can speak with their representative. For now the bijuu is gone, and we should all go about our business.”

Grudgingly the crowd disperses, leaving four of the five clan heads, Tobirama, and a few other high-ranking shinobi. Tobirama technically shouldn’t be on the council, since he’s neither a clan head nor an elder, but it is generally agreed that Hashirama alone isn’t the most appropriate representative for the Senju clan. Similarly, Uchiha Chie usually joins Madara for important council meetings.

Once they have gathered Aburame Shin and the civilian representative, Madara opens the council meeting. “I think we can all agree that we don’t want that thing anywhere near our village,” he says.

Most of the council nod their heads, but Hashirama says, “It didn’t seem, well, malicious. It didn’t threaten—well, it did, kind of. But I don’t think it’s going to hurt us!”

“You do remember it saying, ‘don’t do anything to upset me,’ right? That was what we call an implied threat, Senju.”

“Perhaps more importantly,” interrupts Watanabe Hiro, the craftsmen’s representative, “do we even have the means to kill or capture it?”

“What about sealing?” asks Daisen. “You could get the Uzumaki to create a seal to trap it, right?”

“If we try and fail to seal it,” says Tobirama, “it will certainly kill as many of us as possible.” He doesn’t like the idea that any creature should be targeted just because it is powerful. But this objection is personal, so he will try to convince them with the multitude of other reasons this is a bad idea. “If we try and fail to kill it, it will certainly return the favor. Is negotiation not the safest route? Or perhaps the largest interclan alliance in the world does not have the necessary negotiation skill.”

The argument goes on for hours, and what it boils down to is that most of the council wants to make sure they never see the fox again, and don’t care how it is accomplished. Daisen has a worrying fixation on sealing, believing that they will be able to use the fox’s chakra if it’s sealed. Tobirama knows sealing well enough to know that they could indeed use its chakra, and he knows people—the fox _is_ a person—well enough to know that it would be furious.

Most of the council do not consider the fox a person, despite its obvious intelligence. Tobirama goes home that night with nothing resolved and a headache for his trouble. There’s also a letter from Izuna that must have been delivered sometime during the day. As Tobirama eats a quick, solitary dinner he skims it: Izuna writes about the projects he’s working on, the efforts to recruit more nearby clans, and some of the children he’s been spending time with. He has also included a very beautiful sketch of the front of a shrine, captioned, _What do you think? I used some old Uchiha motifs that you might be interested in. I can tell you about them if you want_.

Tobirama folds up the letter, puts it under the edge of his futon, and starts packing. He doesn’t have much time before Hashirama gets home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the bijuu of course are pretty different now, personality-wise, than after a hundred-odd years of being imprisoned inside a series of jinchuuriki. kurama has always been a rude asshole who threatens people because he thinks it's fun and likes to feel powerful. but some of the others are a lot nicer still!


	26. Chapter 26

 

_Should be back within a few days. Don’t let Madara-san do anything to the academy without my approval. Don’t worry, and don’t try to track me. –Tobirama_

He leaves the message on his bed, where his brother will be sure to find it, before running into the forest to the north. It’s not difficult to follow the fox’s trail. It hasn’t been half a day, and its chakra is strong. It tastes like a wildfire, unmistakable until suddenly it isn’t. In the small mountain range a few hours north of the village, the fox’s chakra fades completely into the green chakra of the forest. Even its deep footprints become lighter and lighter, as if the fox dissolved into air over a distance of a few kilometers. Tobirama keeps following its direction, but its chakra trail never reappears. He can’t even sense a concentration of chakra as large as the fox’s anywhere within Fire Country. But to the northeast, near Hot Water Country, he can feel a vague sense of powerful chakra. This may take more than a few days.

It’s a long time before he realizes that the chakra he’s following does not belong to the fox. This signature burns cold with the flavor of yin chakra, but it must be another one of the bijuu. It’s curiosity that drives him forward now, even knowing that this isn’t the beast he’s looking for, even knowing that the village needs him back. And even though the chakra signature periodically vanishes just as the fox’s did, it always seems to come back a few hours later in a nearby location.

He hardly sleeps for three days to reach the bijuu. When he does, he is barely surprised to see an enormous cat sprawled across the plains, burning with blue fire, two tails twitching gently. There is something in its chakra signature that _feels_ catlike. But more than that, it seems it is Tobirama’s fate to find cats.

The cat stretches and gets to its feet, blinking open odd, pupilless eyes. One shines like the sun, and the other is the deep green of leaves at midsummer. It’s a _demon_ cat like the ones that are said to live in the mountains, eating unwary travelers; but it moves just like any cat he’s ever seen, silent and graceful. Tobirama is fascinated. He’s not sure what he thought he would do here. Speak to it? He has no reason to, since it’s no threat to his village. He’s content to pull out a brush and a spare scroll and try to capture the flickering of cold fire that suggests a solid form.

“ **Are you going to come out?** ” asks the demon cat after a while, and Tobirama nearly drops his brush. It isn’t even looking at him. “ **It’s rude to stare without introducing yourself.** ” It turns its eyes on the tree he’s sitting against, transfixing him with its gaze, and takes two steps to cage him between its paws.

“I—I mistook you for someone else,” he says, realizing how foolish it sounds. “And then I wanted to see—just wanted to see.”

“ **A curious little creature, hmm?** ” The demon cat lies down compactly, bringing its head closer to peer at him. “ **Who could you possibly mistake me for?** ”

“I was looking for the nine-tailed fox,” he says. “It came to our village, I believe because it was suspicious of our motives in founding it. Most of the council wanted to trap it or kill it. I wanted to negotiate a peace so they would have no reason to make it angry.”

“ **Oh, _him_. I suppose he vanished into thin air while you were tracking him. Making fun of humans is his hobby. So instead of going back to your village you went looking for the next best thing.** ”

“I wouldn’t say you’re next best,” says Tobirama without thinking. “I’ve always liked cats, and you’re the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”

The demon cat purrs, a sound like a rockslide that vibrates in his chest, and bares its fangs. He isn’t sure if it’s happiness or amusement. Or maybe a growl. “ **You certainly know how to flatter, though I’m no mere cat. Show me what you’re holding.** ” Tobirama mutely holds out the scroll he was drawing on, and the cat bares its teeth even more, as if parodying a human’s smile. “ **How sweet. I quite like you. Perhaps I’ll come and see your village too.** ”

“No!” The demon cat pauses, looking down on him with its luminous eyes and flexing meter-long claws into the ground. “You won’t be well-received by any other humans. As a rule, humans hate and fear anything more powerful than them.”

“ **It’s good of you to worry, little human, but unlike my brother I actually have social skills. I can be quite charming when I need to be.** ”

“For the village’s sake, I hope so. I can too easily imagine them trying to attack you, and I would rather the village not be destroyed. I… should go now. Thank you for your courtesy.” He bows, and a thought strikes him. “Do you have a name?”

The demon cat stands and stretches. “ **Matatabi. And yours?** ”

Somehow he’s surprised that it asked. “Senju Tobirama.”

“ **I will remember it.** ” And the demon cat fades away to nothing. Tobirama stares at the place where it stood, the scorched pawprints in the grass, and then turns back toward the village.

 

When he returns, Hashirama is much more upset than Tobirama thinks is warranted. Nearly in tears, he almost succeeds in trapping Tobirama in a cage of tree roots. “You were gone for a week! With no explanation and no warning! Everyone was worried about you!”

Tobirama gives him a flat look and severs one of his twisting saplings before it can grab him. “Everyone.”

“Well, I was, and Mito was, and Izuna and everyone on the council. Probably. Even Madara! And Izuna’s nieces heard about it and they were _extremely_ worried. You got two more letters, by the way, before he realized you weren’t here. He was _furious_ , you know. You ought to be nicer to your friends.”

“I don’t have any friends,” Tobirama growls. “Stop trying to bind me. It’s not going to work and we’re both wasting chakra.” And Tobirama is very, very tired. He has been running for almost three straight days.

Hashirama sighs with the manner of a martyr, and walks over to take Tobirama’s hand and pull him into the house. The trees retreat back into the ground, leaving holes that will probably be a walking hazard. “Well, what were you doing, anyway? I hope it was very important. There’s still dinner left over.”

Tobirama accepts a bowl of soup. “I was looking for the fox. I wanted to explain to him that if he came back carelessly many people were likely to die.”

“And?”

“I didn’t find him. He disappeared half a day north of here. The reason I was gone for so long is that I was tracking another bijuu, a demon cat with two tails.”

“ _And?_ ”

Tobirama shrugs. “It said it liked me. It also said it might visit, although I told it that was a bad idea. I even have a picture.” From his pack on the floor, he takes the scroll and hands it to Hashirama.

“Is this cat on fire?”

“It seems to be made of fire.”

“That’s amazing! Oh, stay right there. I’ll wake Mito.” Before Tobirama can tell him that he really doesn’t need to wake Mito, he’s gone. He comes back a minute later with Mito in tow, looking groggy and irritated.

“So, the prodigal brother returns. It was very good of you to tell us exactly and accurately where you were going and when you’d be back.” She looks ready to pounce and possibly maim him. “Welcome home.”

“I understand that what I did was foolish and irresponsible. I’ll do whatever I can to make up for it.”

Mito smiles. It’s not a pleasant smile. “Are you giving me the power to decide what makes up for a week-long disappearance?”

“Not unilaterally—”

“I must have that power too, then!” says Hashirama. “And jointly, we’ve decided you can only make up for it by spending time with Izuna like a responsible friend.” Mito nods decisively.

“We’re not friends!” says Tobirama, exasperated.

“How would you categorize him, then?” asks Mito. Her tone is almost vicious. “Would you call him a partner? Lover, maybe? He’s not _nothing_ to you.”

“I do not need to justify my lack of relationship with Uchiha Izuna to you,” hisses Tobirama. “I haven’t slept for six days, so I will bid you good night.” They don’t follow him into the bedroom. He’s glad of it. Irritatingly, it’s starting to look like not being friends with Izuna is going to be _more_ trouble than being friends with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> humans can’t avoid sleeping for 6 days and come out of it coherent or healthy. magic ninjas can!  
> also lmao at tobirama's weak excuse to see izuna again "I GUESS IT'S MORE ANNOYING NOT TO SO I MIGHT AS WELL!!"


	27. Chapter 27

Tobirama makes an early appearance at Izuna’s house—thankfully, Izuna wakes up earlier than both Hashirama and Mito. He walks just inside the wards he and Mito set up, and flares his chakra. Inside the house, he hears something knocked over and the sound of running feet before the door is wrenched open and Izuna _throws himself_ at Tobirama.

Tobirama freezes, unwilling to give into his instinct to attack but unable to decide whether he should block or flee. Consequently he finds himself lying on the ground, winded, with Izuna sitting on his chest.

“You are the stupidest person I have _ever_ met,” Izuna whispers aggressively. “Please just _stop doing stupid shit_.” Tobirama just looks up at him, wide-eyed. “You run about a third of this village! You can’t just disappear for a week. No-one had any clue if you were even alive!” He grabs the front of Tobirama’s kimono and pulls him up to look directly into his eyes from about two centimeters away. “If you _ever_ leave the village again I’m coming with you. And don’t you _dare_ say I don’t have the right to make demands like that.”

“You don’t—”

Izuna releases him and he falls painfully back to the ground. “You’re infuriating! Why are you like this? Why do I like you?”

“I wish I knew,” mumbles Tobirama, staring up at the slowly brightening sky. Izuna sighs, but doesn’t say anything. For a minute it’s almost peaceful, and then Tobirama says, “Hashirama and Mito are irritated by your letters, I think. They have been extremely persistent in trying to get me to see you.”

Izuna groans. “How are you real? That really, really isn’t their motivation. They’re worried about you.”

Tobirama tries to convey skepticism through his facial expression. He _is_ aware that his brother believes Izuna will make him happy, but he’ll be damned before he’ll admit it.

“I honestly don’t know how you’re still alive.”

“Can you get off?”

“Oh. Sorry. Do you want any breakfast?”

Tobirama has already eaten, but for two days before yesterday he didn’t eat anything, so he follows Izuna inside and accepts a bowl of soup and some pickles.

After a slightly uncomfortable silence he says, “Thank you for trying so hard.”

“It’s nothing,” says Izuna airily. Then he seems to change his mind. “No, it’s not nothing. But I’m glad you’re back. I know you don’t think anyone could like you, but you decided to try anyway. I can’t believe I’m thanking you for not isolating yourself like a hermit. This is just.” He shakes his head. “You’re not like anyone else, which is infuriating but it’s also the reason I like you. I should really stop talking.”

Tobirama almost smiles. “Just don’t tell me you like me. Ever.” It’s a compromise he can live with: he enjoys being with Izuna, and he can avoid thinking about why Izuna is with him.

Izuna comes around the table to push his head into Tobirama’s shoulder. It reminds him vividly of Koima, and he does the only thing that comes to mind: he strokes Izuna’s hair as if he were a cat. It’s not particularly pleasant, because Izuna’s hair is much coarser, but Izuna seems to enjoy it. He hums softly and puts his arms around Tobirama’s waist. For some reason Tobirama’s heart is hammering much harder than normal. He wishes he hadn’t come. He’s glad he did.

When Madara comes out of his room, Izuna has nearly fallen asleep on Tobirama, who is left to drink his soup one-handed. “Good morning,” says Tobirama.

Madara snorts, possibly in laughter. “You can just dump him off, you know.”

“Shut up,” says Izuna, muffled.

“My little brother is growing up so fast,” says Madara, drifting across the kitchen to start making rice. “Soon he’ll be starting a family and settling down.” His deadpan is flawless, which Tobirama appreciates.

Izuna finally sits up to glare at his brother. “Fuck you. I worked hard for this.” Tobirama doesn’t know what to make of being a ‘this.’ He raises his eyebrows at Izuna, who flushes. “Sorry.” He doesn’t retract his statement. Tobirama is beginning to suspect he’s just as possessive as Madara, but hides it better.

“Well, what about you?” Izuna says. “You’re getting pretty cozy with Mito and Hashirama.”

“Mito?” Madara nearly shouts.

“Not going to deny Hashirama?” says Izuna, looking delighted by what he perceives as an admission of guilt.

“I’m not _getting cozy_ with Hashirama or his wife, Izuna. We are colleagues, and we _respect_ each other—”

“Yeah, I’ve seen you respecting Hashirama’s butt when he’s distracted. Sorry, I mean _in_ specting—”

At this point Tobirama vacates the kitchen to watch from a safe distance while the two brothers wrestle on the floor. When the water Madara put on begins to boil, Tobirama edges around them to measure out the rice and put it in the pot, since Madara is otherwise occupied. By the time the rice is done, the racket they’re making has woken up Tsumiki and her children, who effectively break up the fight by asking to ride on Madara’s shoulders.

Tobirama is beginning to think it was a very bad idea to put two nineteen-year-olds among the most powerful people in the new village. A nineteen-year-old warlord is one thing, but a nineteen-year-old councilor is quite another. If he had ignored Hashirama and Mito, he could be at the government building right now catching up on the work he missed while he was tracking bijuu. He resigns himself to staying for another hour when Izuna deposits his niece Jiori in Tobirama’s lap.

“Were you really dead?” asks Jiori.

“You’re seven years old, aren’t you?” She nods. “You should be able to figure it out. Do you think I was dead?”

She hesitates. “Maybe? I don’t think people stop being dead once they’re dead. But Uncle said you were dead and he doesn’t lie.”

“Sometimes people say untrue things without lying because they think they are true. More likely, I believe, is that your uncle was exaggerating his certainty.”

“What’s that?”

“He didn’t know if I was dead, but he said he knew. He made it sound like he was more certain than he was.” He decides to think of this as a test run for his future teaching career. If he can explain this to a seven-year-old, he can teach ninjutsu to a twelve-year-old.

“That’s like lying, isn’t it?”

Tobirama lets out an amused breath. “Perhaps it is. Tell me about your education so far.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a real pity Tobirama doesn't spend much time around Madara and Izuna together, because they're SO much fun to write. Anyway, Izuna is actually a cat too, he's just been hiding it. Tobirama's record of only being friends with cats remains untarnished.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a really long one! And it has all the good stuff: Madara being a protective asshole brother, Ino-Shika-Chou, and Matatabi. And Mizoma being a good boy.

Once his brother isn’t around, Madara is suddenly serious. He waits after the latest curriculum meeting, unsubtly blocking Tobirama’s path to the door. Tobirama doesn’t make a scene, because surely it’s something important. Most likely, Madara wants to tell him off for disappearing, as he has every right to.

“What are your intentions toward my brother?” he says flatly, as if he has never heard the word _propriety_. He at least knows how to fake not caring in front of Izuna, but in no other area does he seem capable of subtlety. Or perhaps he just doesn’t think he needs it. “I hope you’re aware that he…” Here Madara’s scowl deepens. “…holds you in very high regard. You could hurt him easily.” If he thought Tobirama wasn’t aware, he never would have said it. Nor does Tobirama miss the implicit threat. Madara’s specialty.

When he turns his mind to actually answering the question, though, it goes completely blank. He doesn’t have _intentions_ toward Izuna. If anything, it’s the other way around. “I intend to be his… friend, I suppose,” he says carefully, “as long as he—” _will have me_. But it won’t do to show weakness here. No, he has already showed weakness, and the longer he pauses, the worse it will be.

Madara snorts softly. “So that’s how it is. Fine. But keep in mind that I won’t hesitate to destroy you if you hurt him.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit extreme to trade severe physical damage for emotional damage that will probably be unintentional?”

Madara leans close to Tobirama’s face to growl, “He’s my brother.” And he stalks out the door as if he’s determined to have the last word. That’s probably for the best, because Tobirama _can take him_ in a fight, but doesn’t want to argue about it here, of all places.

 

Other than that small… incident, Madara is a pleasantly serious working partner. He and the others have more expertise with children, but Tobirama understands best the theory they will be teaching. It is determined that the six of them will teach the first class at the academy in order to do research. A few days later, the size of their prospective class almost doubles as three western clans agree to move into the village.

The Yamanaka, Nara, and Akimichi clans are expected to fit in well because they have already mastered diplomacy. The three clans have been allied for several generations, so they haven’t been involved in a war for forty years or so. Even more attractive are their unique bloodline abilities—quite possibly the reason no-one has dared to attack them recently.

The council meets with the clan heads, all of whom are very serious women. Akimichi Chouhi is their apparent leader; the other two are surprisingly willing to let her represent their clans’ interests. Their conditions are reasonable, too. All they want is additional rights to land outside the village and seats on the council, which any clan would have gotten.

Within a few weeks, new shinobi from what people are calling the Triad Clans are starting to trickle in, and the academy building is finally constructed next to the government building. Tobirama sets aside one day out of every three to teach a class of twenty-one children, from ages nine to eleven, with Shimura Yuuho. Most of them know very little chakra theory, but soak it up easily enough once Tobirama finds a metaphor they can understand. Madara reports that the children do well in knife throwing, but Shiure says that their reading (except the three Aburame and a few from the Triad) is very poor. It’s unsurprising, because until recently self-defense was much more important than learning to read. In most clans, only one or two heirs and some squad captains really need to know it beyond the ability to do simple arithmetic. Shiure asks for help from the rest of the academy planners to create a curriculum to teach high-level reading.

Consequently, between building the foundations of modern education and his duties on the village council, Tobirama is extremely busy. When he finds a sick kitten in the back garden, he resolves to do his work more efficiently to make time for her, because there’s no other way he can clear his schedule. Izuna is very helpful, there: he takes the kitten during the day to make sure she’s fed often enough. Every night he brings her back to Tobirama’s house and stays for a little while to gossip, or sometimes for dinner. The kitten sleeps in the crook of Tobirama’s arm, guarded by Mizoma.

Amusingly, the children have started calling him _Mizoma-sensei_ , although his only apparent function during classes is to sit on the desk at the side of the room, observing the lesson. “He comes every day, though, even more than you,” a boy named Arashi tells Tobirama seriously. “He’s clearly our teacher, since he shows up so diligently.” Tobirama had been surprised when he tracked his cat’s chakra to the academy, but Mizoma has been going every single day. He seems to like the children very much, or at least the attention they give him.

One day a messenger finds Tobirama in class, while he’s explaining tenketsu. The woman hovers in the doorway uncertainly until he stops and says, “You’re distracting my students more by fidgeting than you will by interrupting the lesson. What is it?”

“A strange woman has entered the village,” says the messenger. “She was asking for you. She asked me very emphatically to tell you she was here.”

“You may tell her that I will find her when I am done teaching. Dismissed.” He fixes the children with a look to stop them _ooh_ ing at the idea of a woman looking for their teacher, and continues the lesson. While he does, though, he expands his sensor range to encompass the village. There are many chakra signatures he doesn’t yet know, but just one he does know that shouldn’t be here.

As soon as the children break for lunch, he makes his apologies to Yuuho, leaves the academy, and finds her sitting in the front room of the government building, staring at the mission reports attendant as if she’s trying to burn a hole in him with only her eyes. She has short, unruly white hair, dark skin, one golden eye, and one green one.

“Matatabi-sama,” he says, bowing deeply. “I did not expect you to be so… formally attired.”

“You actually know her?” mutters the attendant, raking a hand through his hair. “Thank heaven for that. I thought she was going to eat me.”

“I still might,” says Matatabi pleasantly, in a deep but entirely human voice. “Yes, I thought it would be best to present myself in a more politic manner than usual.” She not only looks like a human, but an important one. From her rich clothing, she might be the daimyo of a small foreign country.

“Would you like to come to my house? I imagine there are some things you want to discuss privately.”

“I would. Perhaps I’ll have the opportunity to try tea.”

They walk to his house and he starts boiling water for tea. She looks around with interest, and he finds that two cats have followed her inside. She smiles warmly at them (he thinks it’s a smile) and kneels down. From her chest comes a deep, rumbling purr, and to his slight horror she licks each cat on the head. He sees the hair on her tongue. He sees her swallow it. He tries not to think about it.

The cats sprawl next to her and start grooming her many-layered kimono. Without looking at him, or apparently acknowledging him in any way, she says, “So I have come to see what this village is. The humans here seem remarkably calm.”

“We have done our best to leave behind war in favor of cooperation. It is apparently almost unprecedented, which indicates something damning about human nature.” The exception, of course, is the Triad clans. Their help will be invaluable, no doubt.

“I wish to observe this experiment,” says Matatabi. “But you have said that humans will not take it well. Tell me, do you think they will try to attack me?”

“If they are properly prepared, perhaps not.” Tobirama rises and goes to finish making tea. “It’s the nature of this preparation that I haven’t yet thought of. If you presented yourself as a protector…”

“A patron deity.” Matatabi bares her teeth in what she must think is a smile. “That promises to be very interesting. I imagine I should introduce myself as a human before revealing my true nature.”

“Don’t drink it yet,” says Tobirama as he hands her a cup of tea. “It’s very hot. That may be a good idea, yes.”

He can see her suck some of the heat out with her cold blue chakra before sticking her tongue in and trying to lap it up. She seems to be having trouble until her tongue flattens out, changing from a human’s tongue to a cat’s. “Odd. It tastes green and bitter. I don’t know why humans like this stuff so much.” She continues to drink it, though.

“I suggest that you appear before the council tomorrow and explain yourself as if you were a powerful human noble offering some other kind of protection, and once they agree reveal yourself. Before then, I will talk to my brother and Madara, who may be able to help you during the meeting.”

“Very well. Until then, will you show me some of your human activities?”

He takes her to a food stall, to the recently completed Uchiha shrine, and to the park near the government building where large numbers of children are breaking down diplomatic barriers by way of a great deal of running and shrieking. By the time they return to his house, there is a long train of cats walking after them, and when Matatabi sits down on the floor most of them settle nearby or on top of her legs. Tobirama tries to explain geometric mathematics to her for about an hour, at which point Hashirama comes home.

“Brother, who’s this?” He stands in the doorway, frowning.

“Senju Hashirama, Nibi no Matatabi. She is here to observe the village.”

“You’re saying she’s the bijuu you, you met? She—well, she’s not exactly a sixty-meter-high demon cat, is she?”

“I have chosen to appear in a less intimidating form, Senju Hashirama. **Indeed, I am normally much larger.** ”

“Ah.” Hashirama looks rather taken-aback at the sudden strange reverberation of her voice. “Well, um, welcome. I hope you, uh, enjoy your stay?”

“Matatabi-sama is going to appear before the council tomorrow and ask to stay in the village as a patron deity. I want to introduce her to you and Madara first so you can support her.”

Hashirama edges closer to Tobirama to whisper in his ear, “Why, though? Why do you want her to be here? No offense to Matatabi-sama, I’m sure, but she’s… well, she _is_ dangerous.”

“Do you think it is only important for us to make peace with humans?” asks Tobirama softly. “It has always been my wish for all of nature to be at peace.”

As he knew it would, that makes Hashirama’s face soften, and he smiles gently at Tobirama. “I want the same, brother.” More loudly, he says, “Well, Madara should be home by now. Why don’t we go and see him? And I’ll leave a note for Mito in case she wonders where we’ve gone…” He dashes into the bedroom to find paper while Matatabi laps sedately at her tea.

Madara and Yusuke, Tsumiki’s husband, are making dinner when they arrive, but Izuna, Tsumiki, and the children aren’t there. Madara spots Matatabi and looks at Hashirama, frowning. Hashirama says, “This is Matatabi-sama. She’s a… guest? Potential patron?”

“Are we keeping secrets from Madara?” asks Matatabi pleasantly. Tobirama very nearly rolls his eyes at her lack of tact, but shakes his head. “Ah, then I am at liberty to tell you that I am the two-tailed demon cat. I’m hoping to stay in your village and watch it grow. Senju Tobirama tells me that you can help convince the council to let me stay.”

Madara freezes, and his eyes widen. Beside him, Yusuke’s shoulders are tense and he has paused in his work. “You’re a bijuu?” asks Madara incredulously. “And you want to—to live here?”

“Is that going to be a problem,” she says.

“Well, potentially! You’re an unknown quantity, we have no way to confirm your motives, and you’re powerful enough to obliterate this village if you wanted to. We’re very careful about who we let join, you know. So far all of them have had pure intentions but you can’t be _too_ careful.”

“And how might I prove the purity of my intentions? Shall I allow myself to be caged and degraded, as humans seem to want? Shall I reduce myself so as not to make you fear?” Her chakra grows for a moment, and then subsides again. Tobirama isn’t sure whether she truly lost control of it or whether she is intentionally intimidating Madara, but given her age and experience he assumes the latter.

“Perhaps, Matatabi-sama, instead of using intimidation to get your way you should practice rhetoric and self-control. You will certainly need them for the council.”

She looks over her shoulder at him, apparently amused, then turns back toward Madara. “Indeed. My apologies, Uchiha Madara. I believe the benefits of having me as a protector outweigh the risks, especially considering that refusing me will make it no more difficult for me to crush your village to dust.”

“Still a threat,” mutters Hashirama.

“I am simply stating a fact, Senju Hashirama. There are no tactical disadvantages to declaring me a patron deity of this village, although Senju Tobirama informs me that it may cause some degree of panic among the humans. I would appreciate your expertise in convincing your council that I am correct.”

Tobirama can see that Madara is about to refuse on the principle that he doesn’t like to be threatened, so he flickers closer to whisper, “Please consider carefully before you speak your reasons for refusing. Are they defensible?”

Madara glares at him, but remains silent for a few more seconds, crossing his arms. Then he says, with bad grace, “I don’t think you need any help representing yourself. And if you do, Hashirama can give it. I won’t speak either for or against.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THERE SHE IS  
> [](http://i.imgur.com/96MkcD9.png)  
> As a design note, the super fancy trailing clothes are to hide her tails, which of course she can't get rid of when she transforms (by folk tale rules). And as a worldbuilding note, all the bijuu's human forms look like the humans in whatever place they've lived longest, because that's what a "normal" human is to them. So Matatabi looks like Lightning Country residents, Shukaku would look like Wind Country residents, Saiken probably looks a little like a shark, et c.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> who's ready for TEENS BEING IDIOTS ABOUT ROMANCE (technically Mito is no longer a teen but, u know, she's still adolescent)

The council approves Matatabi after three hours of debate, and she vanishes to make her rounds of the village, convincing the people that she isn’t dangerous. Later Tobirama finds out that the first place she went was the Akimichi compound, where she asked for their help making food she could hand out to promote goodwill. Shiure tells Tobirama that a strange but friendly woman gave her a stick of dango, asked very earnestly about her life and family, and then told her that there would be a giant flaming cat living on top of the cliff that she shouldn’t worry about. And indeed, when the giant flaming cat appears as promised, almost no-one is shocked or afraid. It’s so different from any of the things they normally have cause to fear that they just… don’t.

The village’s shrine, mostly finished already, is altered to include a blue fire motif. Over the course of a week or so people stop calling it ‘the village hidden by leaves’ and start calling it ‘the village protected by the cat.’ When Mito’s deal with the daimyo of Fire Country goes through, it’s officially registered as Nekomamora no Sato.

Tobirama has very little to do with this. Most of the activity of the Triad Clans moving in has died down, so his primary responsibility is teaching at the academy. Almost every night, Izuna visits, ostensibly to see how the new kitten, Nikkouma, is doing. Almost every night, he stays for dinner and has to be taken home by Madara. Often, Madara utterly fails in his objective and finds himself drinking sake with an increasingly handsy Hashirama and his calculating wife. On one memorable occasion he starts kissing Hashirama in the front room, and Izuna, red-faced, actually drags him outside, calling, “Good night, and I’m so sorry!”

Hashirama pouts, licking his lips in some confusion. “Why’d he have to leave?” he asks Mito plaintively.

“Because Izuna’s not drunk enough,” she tells him. “He was probably trying to save Tobi the embarrassment of having to watch his brother canoodling with the enemy.” She leans her chin on his shoulder, grinning at Tobirama. “Isn’t that right, little brother?”

“If you’re going to get drunk,” says Tobirama stiffly, “please warn me at least an hour in advance so I can be nowhere near you.”

“You had plenty of warning,” murmurs Mito into Hashirama’s shoulder. “You wanted to… to make sure we didn’t die, I’d bet. Or get _up_ to anything.”

“But why’d he leave?” asks Hashirama. “He finally kissed me! I mean, I mean, not that I’ve been wanting him to kiss me. I’m a faithful husband…” He hangs his head, burying his face in the collar of Mito’s kimono. “I’m a terrible husband!” he wails.

“Shhhhhhh,” says Mito. “No, you’re not. I want to kiss him too. In fact, I’m willing to let you in on my plan…”

It is at this point that Tobirama picks up his cats and vacates the house in favor of the government building.

The next day, Izuna finds him, summarizes Madara’s crisis of conscience after they got home, and tries to pull Tobirama into what must be a conspiracy to test his patience. “I want nothing to do with this,” he tells Izuna. “I am not going to play matchmaker for the three most powerful people in Nekomamora. And I’m _sure_ that you have better things to do as well.”

“Tobirama, he’s miserable! I can’t abandon my brother in his hour of need!”

“And _I_ cannot stand their dramatics. I have faith in them that they will come to some sort of… agreement. Or rather, I have faith in Mito. Now please, let us never speak of this again.”

Unfortunately, his brother and sister-in-law do not stop being mortifying. Tobirama takes to leaving the house every time Madara arrives, and after the first few visits by Mito and Hashirama to Madara’s house, Izuna starts doing the same. He lies on the floor of Tobirama’s front room (overdramatically, in Tobirama’s opinion) mumbling, “There’s just so much unresolved tension. And they’re not resolving it. Can we please lock them in a warehouse or something? They’re a menace to polite society.”

Tobirama doesn’t look up from his work. “I refuse to get involved.”

“It’s impacting the functioning of the village! I’m serious, they can’t even be in meetings together any more, it’s frustrating and kind of pathetic. We need Hashirama and Madara to be able to look each other in the eye. You know, we’re honestly lucky Mito’s not on the council.”

“And why do you need _me_ to intervene?” he asks, irritated. “You don’t think you’re capable?”

Izuna rolls over to put his head on Tobirama’s knee, looking up irritably at Tobirama. As always, his touch does something strange to Tobirama’s heartbeat, and as always he completely ignores it. “Yes, I _don’t_ think I’m capable. I’m not really the most forceful person, you know? People don’t take me seriously, even though I could literally kill them without even thinking about it. And it’s frustrating that you’re committed to not helping your brother find happiness. He’s struggling, and you don’t think you have any reason to help him just because it’s kind of embarrassing for you. Life is embarrassing, Tobirama! And you’ll have to learn to deal with it someday!”

“I’m busy.” He’s aware that he’s making excuses. He doesn’t _want_ to meddle in his brother’s business. He doesn’t want to be that… close. He realizes that his internal dialogue sounds like a petulant child, and gives in. “Fine. I hope you’re prepared for the complete lack of either tact or delicacy I’m going to apply to this problem.”

Izuna beams at him and tries to hug him upside-down. He tolerates it.

The following day he corners Hashirama and tells him to sit down. He feels very Izuna-like, organizing other people’s lives for them. “What’s this about?” asks Hashirama. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been given a _talk_ by my little brother, as stern as you are.”

“First, I want you to know that this is Izuna’s fault. He wouldn’t let me rest until I promised to try and fix this. Second, what do you _think_ it’s about?”

Hashirama reddens and starts to inch backward. Tobirama throws a kunai into the floor between his feet, and he freezes. “You’re not getting out of this so easily. I don’t even know why you _want_ to get out of it. Would you or would you not be happier if the three of you got over your embarrassment and declared your relationship official?”

Hashirama looks down at his knees, pouting. “Probably yes.”

“Would Mito and Madara be happier?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look me in the eye and lie to me again.”

“Fine! They probably would!”

“Then _what_ is taking you so long? If romantic involvement is the end goal for all three of you, how is it not criminally inefficient to dance around the subject as you have been doing?”

“Well, Mito’s in charge, and she… I suppose she’s trying to hint.”

“And is that an efficient strategy, in your opinion?”

“…No?”

“Marriage is a union of equal partners. If you cannot tell your wife that her strategy is flawed, you should not be married.”

“You’ve become a very good teacher, Tobirama,” says Hashirama meekly.

“Does that mean _yes, I’ll talk to them tonight_?”

“Yes, mother.”

For his impudence, Tobirama throws another kunai a few centimeters from his left hand before turning away. “Good. I’m going back to work now, and you should do the same. We will be hosting dinner, and Madara will be here. Take the opportunity to inform Mito of your plans.”

To Tobirama’s surprise, it works exactly as Izuna said it would. Before Madara can even sit down, Hashirama catches his hands and nearly shouts, “Mito and I would like to court you!”

“Both?” says Madara, his face coloring. “Is that something you can do?”

“Who’s going to stop us?” asks Mito. Then very slowly, as if to make sure he can escape if he wants, she wraps a hand around the back of Madara’s neck and pulls him in to kiss him.

They show no signs of being done after thirty seconds, so Tobirama says, “I’ll leave you to it, then,” and jumps to Izuna’s location. Izuna is standing on the porch, because Madara never even managed to get through the doorway. He looks gleeful.

“Come on, we can eat at my house,” he says. “Um, maybe you’ll also want to sleep at my house, come to think of it.”


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marriage! Bijuu! Kissing!

They waste no time declaring their intent to get married. It will be the ultimate unity of the Senju and Uchiha clans, and will tie Nekomamora tightly to the Isle of Whirlpools. Half the population is thrilled, and half of them seem uncomfortable—at least partially because no-one can figure out if any of them is now officially part of the others’ clans, and who of the three is subordinate. The newly-engaged trio don’t care at all.

It’s Tobirama who convinces them to tell Matatabi first. The three of them, plus Tobirama and Izuna, climb up the cliff to the cave-shrine that has been carved out for her, and they all bow. Even Madara has reluctantly accepted that it’s wise to be deferent to a god who can destroy him with one paw.

She’s in her true form, sprawled across the rock floor with her paws hanging out over the cliff as if to make sure she’s always visible to the village. “ **You are important political figures, right?** ” she asks when they introduce themselves. Hashirama nods hesitantly; Mito firmly. “ **Your marriage will be quite the spectacle, then. Good. I will be attending, so you will need to make sure there is room for me. I get very few visitors up here, mostly disobedient children. Disobedient children, of course, are my favorite kind, but they don’t know much about the state of the village. Why don’t you invite some foreign…** ” She shifts her gaze to Tobirama and twitches her gleaming whiskers.

“Dignitaries?” he suggests.

“ **Yes, those. You’re creating political stability with this marriage, from what I’ve heard about the history of your clans’ quarrel, and I of course am also making your village more powerful and stable.** ”

“It may not be a good idea to reveal our location to a large number of foreigners,” says Madara, with his usual minimum necessary tact.

“ **Quite the paranoid one, aren’t you? Your village doesn’t need to be hidden. It is protected. _I_ will protect it.** ”

Among the guests are clan heads from as far away as central Earth Country (including, of course, a large Uzumaki delegation), two daimyo, and vast numbers of retainers. The most unexpected guest, however, is the nine-tailed fox.

He shows up with very little warning the night before the ceremony, while most of the guests are getting drunk (Tobirama is watching from a distance, purely so he can claim to have been ‘at’ the party when Touka accuses him later). His fur glows softly at night, like coals in a dying fire. Rather than walking closer, he seems to condense out of the darkness like the nature spirit he is. Tobirama suspects that everything about him is a show.

“ **Oho. What’s all this? Matatabi, you haven’t become tame, have you? Or are your new servants holding a festival in your honor?** ”

“ **Brother. I was wondering when you would stick your nose into my business.** ” Her tails twitch, narrowly missing a row of food and game stalls. “ **It’s a wedding for some of the humans. As the guardian of their village, I’m a very important guest.** ”

By this point, even the drunkest of the partygoers has noticed the conversation going on over their heads, and fallen fearfully silent. They’re not afraid of Matatabi, from the number of people who have been coming to greet her throughout the celebration, but they are afraid of the fox.

The fox bares his teeth. It serves dual purposes as a smile and a threat. “ **Guardian. So you _have_ become tame.** ”

“ **You could just as easily say that I have tamed them,** ” she says coolly. “ **Both are equally true. Is there something you wanted, or did you just come to scare my guests?** ”

The fox stretches lazily, swishing his tails through a swath of forest just outside the village. Trees crackle as branches are ripped from their trunks. “ **Nothing, really. Foxes can be just as curious as cats, you know. I hope you enjoy your humans.** ” He vanishes again, fading into the darkness until all that’s left is his burning red eyes and long teeth, and then those disappear too.

There’s a pause, during which everyone turns to look up at Matatabi. “ **Asshole,** ” she says decisively. The village cheers in raucous agreement, and soon enough music starts up again. She has become very good at diplomacy, or at the very least appealing to the lowest common denominator.

A few minutes later Izuna appears behind Tobirama’s shoulder to ask, “What was _that_ about?” He’s a bit tipsy, leaning against Tobirama’s side for balance.

“Posturing, I suspect,” he answers, taking a small sip of the wine he accepted an hour ago so that people would stop trying to give him drinks. “Bijuu are just more direct about it than… well, _some_ humans. Nekomamora is more or less in disputed territory, and I would guess that the fox wanted to remind everyone he still has a claim on it.”

“Hmmmm.” Izuna leans more heavily on him. “Bijuu are weird, but I guess they’re a lot like humans. I don’t suppose you want to join in the party?”

“Your supposition is correct,” says Tobirama. “Now that any further excitement is unlikely, I was considering going home.”

Izuna sighs theatrically. “You would,” he mourns. “Come on, then. I’ll walk you. I was trying to figure out which house our about-to-be-weds are going to end up at, loudly making out at midnight, so you could go to the other one. But they’re just not predictable enough.”

“If they have any sense at all, they will stay away from Tsumiki in the hours before dawn. She won’t appreciate having her children woken.”

“My house it is, then,” says Izuna cheerfully. “Let’s hope they do have a little sense.”

Izuna makes Tobirama support his weight more than is probably necessary on the walk home, but Tobirama doesn’t mind the contact. He’s finally become used to being touched, after six months of being subjected to Izuna. He slides open the door and hauls Izuna over the threshold, depositing him on the floor to take off his shoes. Rather than doing so, Izuna stares at his own feet and leans into Tobirama’s side again. Tobirama sighs and slides Izuna’s shoes off, then puts an arm around his waist to pull him to his feet.

Izuna pushes his face into Tobirama’s shoulder, humming softly as he sometimes does when he’s content. Tobirama stays still, indulging him, but he doesn’t pull away for a long time, and Tobirama starts to suspect he’s fallen asleep until Izuna looks up and kisses him.

He nearly misses, actually, because he’s considerably more inebriated than he seems. But he’s pulling Tobirama closer and he seems to be trying to chew on his mouth, which is quite unpleasant. Tobirama is having a great deal of trouble figuring out what he’s feeling right now, aside from pain. He falls back on logic: whatever his feelings toward Izuna at the best of times, he does _not_ want Izuna to kiss him while he’s drunk. So he gently pries Izuna away and holds him by the shoulders, an arm’s length away.

“You are drunk, Izuna,” he says. “This is not the time.”

“So there is a time?” asks Izuna.

“We’ll discuss it later. Now, we are going to your bedroom, and you are going to sleep.”

The last thing Izuna says before he falls asleep is a mumbled, “I thought kissing was supposed to fix things…”

“That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard,” Tobirama tells him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tobirama when drunk: a perfect gentleman, forgets how to use grammar and suppress comments about his crushing loneliness. Izuna when drunk: cute but rude, makes out with people without asking first, gets sleepy. 
> 
> Also I just realized that “hauling Izuna over the threshold” after a wedding party sounds… extremely married due to some British (?) traditions.


	31. Chapter 31

When Izuna wakes up and finds Tobirama and Yusuke making breakfast he glances apprehensively at Tobirama, clearly remembering what he did last night. Tobirama gives him a tiny shrug and an expressionless look to indicate that he shouldn’t worry about it, but Izuna seems to interpret it differently. He frowns at Tobirama and then at the ground like he’s thinking hard. Tobirama despises nonverbal communication. It’s so _inexact_.

After eating, Tobirama and a very quiet Izuna go to his house, where their brothers and sister-in-law presumably fell asleep. Tobirama tells Izuna to go in, not just because he does _not_ want to see any of them naked, but also because Izuna argues against it in a fierce whisper that is unlike his previous reticence. But he reports back that they’re just sleeping in a pile on Tobirama’s bed, like puppies. Izuna seems to think it’s very charming, but when Tobirama goes inside he finds Madara drooling on _his_ pillow.

Tobirama kicks the sleepers gently until they wake and start to look embarrassed. “We brought you breakfast,” he says. “Should I move out?”

“Who’s moving out?” asks Hashirama, confused.

“I was willing to sleep in a room with your wife, but I draw the line at both your husband and wife. Or perhaps you could build a new house, and I could have this one.”

“Why are you making me decide things before breakfast?” Hashirama wails. Mito shushes him. In a quieter voice he says, “I want my whole family to be in one place…”

“The furthest I will _ever_ live from you is a three-minute walk. Please get up.”

Madara stands, face already settled into a surly expression, and the other two trail after him—they do not habitually wake early. While they’re occupied by the food, Izuna whispers in Tobirama’s ear, “When should we talk about… the thing.”

Mito, who has a sense for secrets, glances up from her rice. “Today, if you want. Our dear siblings will be off soon enough to prepare for their wedding.”

“Ah!” shouts Hashirama. “We’re getting married today! Madara, Mito, we’re getting married!”

Madara and Mito share a long-suffering look. “Yes, we are,” says Madara. “We need to be at the shrine at noon, and before that there are seven different delegations that want to talk to us because heaven forbid we have our damned wedding day in peace.”

“You can sit there and look pretty,” says Mito. “You don’t even need to pay attention. Make eyes at Hashirama while I sort out the politics.”

“That’s not what I meant!” says Madara, and they all begin to argue.

Tobirama sighs and allows him a brief moment of bad posture, slumping forward over the table. Izuna pats him on the back, then withdraws his hand as if burned.

After the rest have gone, Tobirama looks at him pointedly, and he executes a protracted wince. “So,” he says.

“So,” agrees Tobirama. “You wanted to talk about the _thing_.”

“Don’t sound all _dry_ about it,” says Izuna. He hides his face in his arms on the table. “I’m really sorry. I was drunk.”

“I accept your apology,” says Tobirama. “It doesn’t seem particularly important, in the grand scheme.”

Izuna looks up, scowling. “How is it that every single time I try to talk to you about your feelings I end up pissed off within half a minute? How do you do that?”

“A natural gift, I suppose. Why are you angry that I’m _not_ angry?” He really does want to understand what is happening in Izuna’s head right now. It’s so difficult to fathom what he’s thinking.

“I’m angry that you don’t care! I know you don’t care about anything but it always makes me uncomfortable when I remember you don’t care about me either. We’ve had this same conversation so many times, I don’t know why I bother.”

“You are important to me as a major aspect of my daily life. In a crisis, I believe your safety would be my first priority after the safety of the village.” And after Hashirama, of course. He wants to ask…

“Really?” Izuna makes eye contact, and Tobirama’s heart stops for a moment. His black eyes are too _intense_. “Well, I call that progress!”

“Why do you try so hard for me?” Tobirama asks. He wants to hear the answer. He doesn’t want to hear it.

Izuna still hasn’t looked away from his face. “Honestly,” Izuna says, “it was a long time before I liked you. You’re hard to like. But I’ve always liked how you make the world steady. You’re one of the few people I’ve ever met who makes me feel safe.” Finally, finally, he looks down. “I kind of took it too far when I was writing to you. I just needed someone to complain to. To vent off my anger at the unfairness of the world. You never told me to stop so I built an understanding in my head. I thought I knew what you were thinking. I’ll never make _that_ mistake again.”

Tobirama _just_ dares to slide his hand across the table, palm up, toward Izuna. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was, and always have been, a machine made for war. You deserve better.”

Izuna’s head jerks up and he meets Tobirama’s eyes again. “Shut up. Don’t apologize for what was done to you.” He takes Tobirama’s hand and squeezes it tightly. “Never.”

Tobirama can’t hold his gaze. “It’s frustrating to be inhuman, but I can’t imagine what it’s like not to be. Thank you, I suppose, for putting up with me. It _has_ helped.” How has Izuna avoided becoming a war machine as he has? Does Tobirama have some natural deficiency that causes him to be like this?

“Please let me kiss you now,” says Izuna softly.

“Don’t _chew_ on me,” Tobirama tells him. He leans forward and meets Izuna over the table. After a moment, he leans back out of reach and says, “What do you think you’re doing with your tongue.”

“Kissing?”

“Is that what kissing is? That’s disgusting. I thought you were just bad at it because you were drunk.”

Izuna starts laughing, still leaning precariously out over the table. “You really aren’t human! I’ll have you know that two out of three Uchiha agree I’m a great kisser.”

“And the third?” asks Tobirama.

“Never mind the third. Anyway, if I can’t kiss you what _can_ I do?”

“Anything else, I suppose.”

Izuna flickers across the table onto Tobirama’s lap, kneeling so that he’s grinning down at Tobirama. “ _Anything_ else?”

Normally Tobirama would clarify _within reason_ , but he is transfixed by Izuna’s eyes.

“You’re blushing!” says Izuna delightedly. He brings up one hand to stroke his thumb over Tobirama’s cheek. Tobirama takes a shaky breath, and Izuna’s smile softens. “You just like it when I touch you. Here.” His thumb wanders to the corner of Tobirama’s mouth and hovers over his lips, catching on chapped skin. Tobirama closes his eyes and tries to think of nothing but Izuna’s fingers. He’s aware of the amount of trust he’s consciously putting in Izuna.

“I want you to be _mine_ ,” Izuna murmurs. His fingers trace Tobirama’s tattoos.

Tobirama doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t want to be speared again by Izuna’s. “I’m surprised that you of all people haven’t noticed. Depending on the classification system you use, I probably have been yours for months.” It’s strangely satisfying when he hears Izuna’s breath catch. “No-one else is exactly waiting in line.”

“You really are the least romantic person I’ve ever met,” says Izuna. He sounds fond.

“It comes naturally,” says Tobirama.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any views expressed by Uchiha Izuna are not necessarily endorsed by the author. If you think kissing is nasty it doesn’t make you inhuman, although you may, like Tobirama, be sort of incidentally inhuman.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nieces are here!!

They all looked happy at their wedding: Mito content and elegant, Hashirama beaming and vibrating with energy, and Madara for once smiling an uncharacteristically soft smile. When Madara started getting surly again at the party afterwards, Hashirama picked up his husband and wife and carried them back to his house, to raucous cheering. Needless to say, Tobirama slept at Izuna’s house again. Izuna has apparently abandoned all trepidation about Tobirama’s approval, because he spent that night wrapped around Tobirama like a heavy second blanket.

Now the newlyweds look tired, irritated that they can’t afford more than two days off to celebrate privately. Mito has been asked to become the administrative and military head of Nekomamora—but not before both of her husbands flatly refused the responsibility. Tobirama has heard how bitter she is about _that._ The daimyo now calls her _Hokage_ , which in Tobirama’s opinion is unnecessarily ostentatious, or as Izuna says, just plain tacky. She’s scrambling to find advisors and subordinates for positions that didn’t exist a week ago.

“You’re the most reliable person I know,” she tells Tobirama, looking like she would rather be asleep. She hides it well, still clean and elegant, but he’s known her long enough that he can tell. “Unless you have a very good reason to refuse, I’m making you the head of shinobi dispatch and tactics. In practical terms it means you’ll command in the event of a battle or mass mobilization, and you’ll need to compile records of all the shinobi in the village, because what we have now is not comprehensive or confirmed to be accurate. You’ll be helping me assign mission teams based on who you think is most suited.”

“Very well,” he says. “Will I need to quit teaching?” He’s bracing himself already for an affirmative answer. Unexpectedly, he enjoys teaching unreservedly. Children can be so much less stubborn than adults, and most of them are much cleverer.

Mito favors him with a tired smile. “No. Quit the council instead. Hashirama needs to learn how diplomacy works for himself, and if he hasn’t learned anything from watching you for four months he needs to be thumped. You can also quit the six committees you’re on, because you’re not the only sensible person in the village, as much as you like to think so. And seeing as you won’t think of it yourself, you _are_ allowed to find subordinates to help you, otherwise you won’t get any sleep.” He’s busy enough with teaching, caring for his cats (and, similarly, Izuna), the periodic visits Matatabi insists on, and the curriculum design he continues to work on with the other five academy teachers. He will indeed need to find subordinates.

He soon finds more to occupy him when he accidentally takes on two extra students. Any free time he might have had vanishes. It happens like this.

Uchiha Jiori and her older sister Ayumi have been trying to learn by themselves the clan ninjutsu their parents won’t teach them. Tobirama is a mediocre fire user at best, but he knows incorrect chakra usage when he sees it happening behind the academy on an off day.

“Katon!” whispers Ayumi stubbornly. She doesn’t mold her chakra at all before she releases it from her mouth, and it merely disperses invisibly into the air.

“You’ve never been taught to mold chakra,” Tobirama observes. The girls start and look around at him.

“Uncle Madara said he didn’t want us learning to fight,” says Ayumi with an air of complaint. “I was _about_ to start learning chakra when our Bad Uncle died and Uncle Madara said we didn’t have to fight. I still wanted to but he wouldn’t let me and Mama agreed so I didn’t get to.”

“Why do you want to fight?” He can’t understand it. He was never given a choice, but if he had been he wouldn’t ever have killed. He’s finally able to choose not to live by death. “It’s a great responsibility, and a great burden on the soul.” He doesn’t remember the first person he killed. It was an Uchiha, of course, and he knows the exact day, but he hurt so many people without looking at their faces before he thought to check if any of them were dead.

“I don’t want to not be able to do anything,” says Jiori, “like what happened to Mama when her sister got killed. And now we met all these cool friends and they’re learning and I want to learn too.”

Ayumi grimaces and makes an unsubtle shushing motion. “What my sister means is that we want to protect the village and our family and be able to go on missions to help them.”

Tobirama can see that they’re trying, in a roundabout way, to ask him to teach them, and he feels that it would be irresponsible not to instill a little more subtlety, at least. Mission work is likely to be their main source of income, after all, and he can’t stop them from enrolling in the academy when they’re old enough. “Very well. I’m willing to show you how it’s done—” He has to interrupt their cheering to finish his sentence—“if _you_ are willing to dedicate yourselves to learning. If you ever decide that you’ve had enough of learning to fight, you will be punished.” It sounds too much like something his father would have said, but he can’t unsay it now. He tries to lighten the effect: “Not to speak of the dishonor on your clan.”

The two bow low and say, in ragged chorus, “We will dedicate ourselves, sensei.”

“Good. Ayumi, your problem is that you aren’t molding your chakra at all. Elemental transformation is a difficult thing to get right, and you don’t even have the basics. First, mold your chakra in your hand to make it visible. Control it. Externalize it.” He turns to Jiori, who is waiting impatiently. “Now, Jiori, show me your fireball.”

Either she picked up what he told her sister _very_ quickly, or she already has an intuitive grasp of chakra molding from watching others, because she manages to produce a tiny tongue of flame.

“Tell me,” he says to both of them—Jiori looking inordinately proud of herself, and Ayumi struggling to cup shining chakra in her hands—“what is the nature of fire?”

“Bright and hot,” says Ayumi, releasing the chakra in her hands to drip onto the ground. She almost certainly has a primary water nature, from the way she visualizes chakra. She’s halfway to a water transformation already.

“Jiori?”

“What’s nature?” she asks.

“What does it _do_?”

“It burns things up.”

“What does it burn?”

They both frown. “Wood,” says Ayumi uncertainly. He can see she has grasped the fact that there is no wood inside her mouth. “Oil?”

“What does it burn when you make a fireball?”

“Can you burn chakra?” asks Ayumi uncertainly. “It’s like energy, right? Fire has energy, so…” She screws up her face, unable to finish the sentence.

“Try it,” Tobirama tells her.

Ayumi gathers chakra in her hands again like a pool of oil. She stares at it for half a minute, and then looks up at Tobirama. Behind her, Jiori is puffing tiny fireballs with an expression of ferocious concentration.

“How do you light oil?”

“A spark!” cries Ayumi. “I just need one spark!” The pool of chakra catches alight almost immediately. She screams and drops it onto the ground, scorching the grass. Tobirama puts out the smoldering dirt with a stream of water, and kneels down to heal her hands.

“Try to remember that chakra-burning fire is just as dangerous as any other fire. When you make a fireball, do _not_ light it until it comes out of your mouth.”

This time Ayumi’s fireball is large enough to scorch the grass. Jiori looks on enviously, and then comes to tug on the hem of Tobirama’s kimono as Ayumi drops to her knees, panting. “Why can’t I do that?” Jiori demands.

“Ayumi’s nature transformation is more advanced than yours, but she has a water nature. Take my hand and release some chakra, and I’ll tell you what you have.” She does so; her chakra prickles under his skin like the stinging fibers of a nettle. “Your secondary nature is wind,” he tells her, “although like everyone in your clan you also have a fire nature. You’re fortunate. Wind makes fire stronger, as long as it’s big enough. But when the fire is too small, like a lamp when you blow hard on it—”

“Poof!” says Jiori, miming the candle flame being extinguished.

“Precisely. For now, we will ignore your wind nature. It won’t help you produce fire. The reason your fireballs are so small is that you don’t have very much chakra to put into them—look at your sister. She’s very tired, isn’t she?”

“YES,” says Ayumi from where she is lying on the ground.

“There you have it. Your ninjutsu will be weak until the total amount of chakra you can put into it increases. And we increase chakra by practice, and by meditation. Find a comfortable position…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do education research and I can't help but stick education theories in my fanfiction


	33. Chapter 33

Ayumi and Jiori start following him everywhere when they aren’t being watched by Izuna or their parents. The only good thing about it is that he’s able to foist shrine cat duty on them.

Matatabi has somehow invested the village shrine with her energy, and it attracts cats. People leave offerings of meat at the shrine for them, but no-one leaves offerings in the cave up in the cliff where Matatabi lives. There is a sizeable colony of cats up there who also need to be fed, and occasionally their donated bedding must be washed. Ayumi and Jiori are reasonably happy to do the job in the name of training, which is good, because Tobirama absolutely does not have time. He himself has attracted another cat, rather old and shy, who hides under the furniture. Tobirama has named him Isuma.

Now Tobirama sits between Matatabi’s paws while the girls run around chasing cats. A few minutes ago they ran afoul of the Nyashi and Nyahou clan delegations, and are now playing closer to the mouth of the cave. Fortunately for them, the cats who live with Matatabi are smart enough not to get caught.

Tobirama sips his tea.

Matatabi insisted on having a human-sized hearth and kettle, as well as the massive cauldron where she boils water when she wants tea for herself. Forty kilos recently arrived from Tea Country, bought with donations from the grateful people of Nekomamora. Tobirama, however, is drinking offerings from the shrine, which Ayumi and Jiori collected on the way here.

“ **And how is the academy?** ” Matatabi asks. “ **I’ve heard you’re having trouble teaching them to read. I’ve always believed that literacy and scholarship are very important.** ”

Tobirama sighs. “They’re making excellent progress, considering where they were a month ago. The real problem is that four more clans have joined the village, and _their_ children cannot read at all.”

“ **Oh, I know this one. Utatane, Hyuuga, Hatake, and Tsukikage, yes? One with a very powerful doujutsu and two with established summoning contracts.** ”

“Who have you been talking to?” he asks, faintly surprised.

 **“Nara Shikaten is exceedingly polite and solicitous. She even offered her children as shrine attendants, but I didn’t want to take the honor away from you.** ”

“I’ll tell them they can have it.” He looks away for a moment at Jiori, who is rolling on the floor and talking to an amused black cat. She is very similar to her uncle sometimes. “Perhaps they will be willing to share. In any event, you may have heard a certain rumor from the council, depending on Nara-san’s dedication to gossip.”

“ **Oh?** ”

“Mito tells me her father is attempting to open negotiations with an aquatic bijuu, perhaps intending to ask for protection of the sort you offer.”

“ **Isobu?** ” muses Matatabi. “ **I don’t know if he’d want the kind of relationship I have with your village. He’s rather shy and timid, or at least he was when I last spoke with him five hundred-odd years ago. He may not even be any use to them, despite being reasonable at fighting. We shall see, I suppose.** ” She stands up and stretches. “ **Well, this has been lovely, but I am a busy god and I can’t keep the ninja cats waiting forever. Take your nieces with you when you go, please.** ”

“They’re not my nieces,” he says. Then he raises his voice to call out, “Ayumi, Jiori. Matatabi-sama has asked us to leave, and we must not overstay our welcome.”

“ **Oh, have you not married dear Izuna yet?** ” Matatabi asks airily. “ **You ought to, before someone else does**.”

“No-one else is going to marry him.” He says it with irritable affect, because she _is_ irritating, but still he is strangely pleased that she knows. He never would have been pleased before that it’s _Tobirama and Izuna_ rather than just _Tobirama_ —but now someone is his. And apparently he comes with nieces.

Because Mito insisted he take the day off and leave cataloguing to his assistant, he takes Ayumi and Jiori to a parcel of land that has been dedicated for training for their lesson. They drop quickly into meditation; they’re good at stillness, for their age. Certainly when Hashirama was eight years old he could scarcely stop moving for a minute.

Tobirama meditates with them, extending his awareness from the flame of chakra in his own body out beyond the borders of Fire Country. He can feel the fox’s chakra, strangely diffuse, to the north. Further west there is another inferno of chakra, another bijuu. Altogether he can sense three other than Matatabi. He pushes further, trying to sense all the way to the Isle of Whirlpools and feel Isobu’s chakra.

Half an hour later Jiori is starting to get restless, so he leads them in stretches, and then lets them spar with each other in taijutsu to warm up.

By now they’re both competent with the fireball technique, and so they are finally willing to work on basic ninjutsu. He shows them clones, transformations, and replacements, looking forward to when they have enough chakra to create shadow clones. Their reserves have already almost doubled in the two weeks they’ve been training with him, though in absolute terms it’s not a large increase.

Jiori is good at transformations and other illusion techniques—she will be an excellent genjutsu user someday. Ayumi has better intuition for the physical, and does well with the ambush tactics associated with illusion.

Two hours later they’re lying on the ground, utterly exhausted, with Mizoma pawing gently at their hands—he returned from the academy halfway through the lesson and found Tobirama. Tobirama could almost suspect that he has chakra sensing abilities, though no doubt it’s something as pedestrian as a good sense of smell. He meows plaintively, seems finally to decide that they’re too tired to pet him, and comes to Tobirama instead.

“This is the last day I’ll carry you home,” Tobirama tells Ayumi and Jiori as he strokes Mizoma’s head. “Tomorrow I expect you to be able to walk after our lesson.”

“Howwwww?” whines Jiori. “I can’t even move my fingers!”

“Shinobi must learn moderation as well as dedication,” says Tobirama. He smooths Mizoma’s fur, stands, and scoops her up. “Do you think you can move your fingers enough to hold onto me while I pick up your sister?”

“Mhm.” He can see that she’s trying hard to look pitiful, in hopes that he’ll change his mind about carrying her tomorrow.

He helps Ayumi climb onto his back—Mizoma offended that his perch has been taken—and starts for home.

Izuna is there already, grinning from his place on a cushion as he watches Tobirama set his nieces down to curl under the kotatsu. Mizoma jumps up onto his shoulder with a chirr, and Izuna pets him absently. “This never gets any less adorable. Tobirama carrying his tired kittens home after a long day of training.”

Tobirama fixes him with an unamused stare, but he seems to be immune.

He lies down on the floor, utterly undignified, to stroke Jiori’s hair. Mizoma, who is used to this, walks onto his back and sits there compactly, regally. “I can tell you worked really hard. What did you learn today?”

“Soooo much,” Jiori mumbles. “I learned Ayumi hits hard but I’m way better at transforming.”

“ _I’m_ more coordinated,” says Ayumi. She overpronounces _coordinated_ , making sure she says it just like Tobirama did. “Uncle says I’ll be a great swordswoman!”

Izuna looks at Tobirama, beaming. “You’re an uncle! Aren’t you pleased you’ll have some experience for when Brother and Hashirama and Mito have their baby?”

“Are you telling me Mito is pregnant _already_?” he asks with faint disbelief.

“What’s pregnant,” says Jiori loudly.

“She’s going to make a baby inside herself and then it’ll come out and you’ll have a cousin!” says Izuna. “And no, Tobirama, I’m not saying she’s pregnant. But I’m saying she _will_ be soon. I mean, have you seen the way she…” He trails off, glancing down at Jiori. “She’ll be very excited to have a baby, I’m sure.”

“She’s the de facto ruler of Nekomamora,” says Tobirama. “Don’t you think it would be more efficient to establish the village’s administration before bearing a child?”

“So practical,” Izuna sighs, rolling onto his back and taking a giggling Jiori with him (Mizoma jumps off his back and whacks him in the face with his tail). “Your Uncle Tobirama always thinks of how to keep the village safe.”

“Thanks, Uncle,” says Jiori.

Tobirama refrains from telling her that he’s not her uncle, because he doesn’t want to argue with Izuna.

 


	34. Chapter 34

Mito summons him to her office, looking no less tired than she did three weeks ago. “Unfortunately,” she says, “we don’t have many high-level shinobi who are cleared for missions yet. Still, this should not be _too_ difficult for you, even with only a chuunin for support. It’s a theft; Watanabe-san’s cousin is willing to pay well to have his property returned. Several bales of silk.” She hands him a scroll with a map and a few relevant details. “You will choose your own partner, seeing as you know best which shinobi are cleared and classified as chuunin.”

He politely waits until after she has explained his mission before he checks to see if Izuna was right. There are _two_ faint flames flickering in her gut, barely detectable next to the sun of her own chakra. “Twins?” he says, skeptical.

Mito gives him a smug look, confirming his suspicion that nothing happens in her body without her sanction. “One of each, dear brother. I won’t have any accusations of favoritism.”

He tries not to think too carefully about the process, and says instead, “Your chakra control truly is the best in the world. I frankly have no idea how such a thing can be done with chakra—I hope you know what you’re doing. Leading a village while pregnant must be bad enough, but two…”

“And who is an expert on how difficult that is?” she says serenely. “Go ahead on your mission, and don’t tell anyone before I’m ready or I may have to do something awful but nonpermanent to you.”

She is exhausted, and will only become more so. Hopefully the stress won’t affect her unborn children. “Take care,” he tells her, and leaves.

When he travels north toward the reported location of the bandits’ hideout, he takes with him Tsukikage Junichiro. Junichiro is one of five chuunin from the four newest clans who have already been cleared for duty—and three of the rest are from the Hyuuga clan, all of whom seem unsettlingly eager for battle. Junichiro is almost as unsettling in his own way. His skin is as pale as birch bark, his eyes golden and slit-pupiled; his dark hair does indeed look like a shadow falling across the face of the moon. When he opens his mouth, however, he reveals a pleasant baritone and an oft-used laugh. It does a great deal to offset the effect of his looks, and he’s already fairly popular in the shinobi dispatch station. The Hyuuga could perhaps take a hint from him. _They_ are viewed as standoffish and dangerous, and most of his shinobi aren’t sure why they joined the village at all.

In Tobirama’s opinion, though, Junichiro’s best quality is his ability to be silent. He doesn’t bother Tobirama at all through the day-long trip, and easily defers to him when they find the bandits’ hideout. Junichiro is to be the lookout while Tobirama, more proficient at sealing, recovers the cloth they came to retrieve.

In retrospect, it would have been better to take a few minutes longer to seal the cloth. Tobirama can hold off nine bandits for an indefinite amount of time if he’s well prepared. Junichiro can’t quite manage the time it takes Tobirama to seal six bales of silk.

And so when Tobirama emerges from the building he sweeps five men out of the way with a concussive wall of water. In quick succession, he flashes behind the other four and knocks them out with precise strikes. Junichiro he finds lying in the mud, hands clamped over a gut wound and bleeding from a dozen other small cuts. Tobirama kneels beside him, knees squelching, and carefully removes his hands from his abdomen to start pouring healing chakra in. He’s so focused on realigning Junichiro’s veins that he barely notices the woman behind him in time to force chakra into his hand to block a sword blow. The blade still sinks a centimeter into his palm, but he’s also able to tear it away from her grasp. He can’t divide his attention any more—having stanched most of Junichiro’s internal bleeding he is free to jump to the nearest marked kunai he placed.

Now he is about five meters behind her, and she looks around in confusion. Certainly she is not a shinobi, but still it makes him uncomfortable that she is between him and Junichiro, along with three other bandits who have gotten to their feet.

Knowing he will most likely regret it, he holds up the sealing scroll with his injured hand and says, “You want me, I think. This is your silk. I doubt you’ll be able to get it out of the scroll, though, as you obviously have no idea how to use chakra.”

Unfortunately, although they’re not shinobi they’re not stupid either. The woman standing over Junichiro picks him up, retrieves her sword, and holds it against his neck, careless of the thin line of blood that begins to flow from it. “Nah, think I’ll let you get it out for us. Stand real still while Rui makes sure you can’t run off on us.”

“Nice one, Yumi,” says one of the others. “Hamstringing, you think?”

Yumi scratches her nose with her sword hand, scraping the blade across Junichiro’s neck. “You never know with ninja. Some of ‘em can use their hands to just poof away.”

“You’ll need my hands to get the silk out,” says Tobirama. “Sealing requires hand signs, like this.” One-handed, he forms the seals to create a shadow clone behind a tree, out of sight of the bandits. “Of course, it requires two hands, so I’ll have to put the scroll down. But I won’t run off. You don’t need to hamstring me.”

“See, that’s just what someone who was gonna run off would say, isn’t it?”

Rather than making a reply, Tobirama lets his shadow clone flicker behind Yumi and strike her unconscious, grabbing her sword hand to make sure she doesn’t injure Junichiro as she falls. Then the clone picks up Junichiro and flickers again, away into the trees. The other bandits turn to see what happened, and Tobirama takes the opportunity to run too.

He stops two kilometers away so that his shadow clone can set Junichiro down and disperse. Even having reintegrated that chakra, he’s well below half capacity. He uses most of the rest on finishing Junichiro’s healing, and finds himself too weary to both heal his own hand and return to the village. Instead he cuts a strip from Junichiro’s ruined kimono (Tobirama’s is still salvageable with a good washing) and wraps his hand up. He makes a note that all shinobi on missions should be required to bring medical supplies as well as a rudimentary knowledge of healing.

Junichiro wakes while Tobirama is tying off the bandage (very carefully, trying not to move his injured hand), and sits up, wincing. “What happened?”

“I made an error in judgment and set you against too many opponents. You were injured, but I healed the worst of it.”

“You’re injured too.” Junichiro reaches toward Tobirama’s hand as if to touch it, but stops at the last moment.

“It isn’t serious.” He can’t move most of his fingers right now; one of his tendons was actually severed by the sword blow, along with the carpal bone of his little finger. It’s a pity Junichiro won’t have medical training yet. “We should focus on getting back to Nekomamora. Can you walk?”

“I don’t feel anything worse than bruises, actually. I could _run_ back.”

Tobirama gets to his feet, sheathing his shortsword. “Excellent. Let’s go, then.”

 

When they make it home a few hours before dawn, Tobirama is so tired that he briefly considers going directly home without speaking to a medic. Junichiro resolves the question for him by clamping himself onto Tobirama’s arm and steering him firmly to the medical building. Being touched by him is unpleasant and it makes Tobirama tense, but Junichiro might misinterpret any attempt to extricate himself. And Tobirama is so very tired. It will be easier just to let it happen.

He dozes through the duty medic’s lecture on helping oneself first—he would rather run with an injured hand than carry Junichiro any day—and finally he is free to walk home by lamplight. Junichiro offers to walk him there but Tobirama cannot bear any more physical contact. “No thank you. Good night,” he snaps, and walks quickly away. He’ll regret it in the morning, possibly.

Izuna is still awake, staring unseeing at a half-finished drawing and tapping the wooden end of his brush on the paper. Tobirama slumps down against the wall beside him, for once too tired to sit up straight.

“You’re home,” says Izuna quietly, warmly. “You look exhausted.”

Tobirama closes his eyes and nods, his head scraping against the wall. “There were… complications. I’ll tell you later.”

“What happened to your hand?” He feels the light touch of Izuna’s fingers on the splint that keeps the two halves of his bone in place.

“A sword.”

He can feel Izuna’s chakra vibrating with vivid tension, wanting to interrogate him about why he didn’t have his own sword to meet it. But Izuna just sighs deeply and traces the line of Tobirama’s thumb. A moment later Tobirama feels lips pressed there, and his breath stutters. Izuna smiles against his skin and kisses his wrist. “Stop me if it’s too much.”

“You are entirely too much all on your own,” sighs Tobirama, and moves to run his thumb over Izuna’s cheek.

“I’ll take that as a _keep going_.” A kiss just under his jaw; another lingering on the soft, vulnerable skin of his throat. His body has tensed again, and he feels somehow helpless under Izuna’s hands and mouth. He has no way of knowing if this is happiness or fear.

“I…” He can barely hear his own voice. “I need… to sleep…”

Izuna sighs again, pushing his face for a moment into Tobirama’s shoulder under the collar of his kimono. He shivers, unable to hold himself entirely still, although his mind is frozen. “You really do,” says Izuna. “If you could stand up right now I’d say you were dead on your feet. Come on, then, I’ll carry you.”

Tobirama allows Izuna to pick him up and set him on Madara’s futon (though for all practical purposes it’s his now). Izuna pulls the blanket up over them both and wraps himself around Tobirama. It’s almost more than he can bear right now, but he forces himself to relax until his exhaustion finally drags him into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Senju "it's just a scratch" Tobirama fucks up having interpersonal boundaries because he’s too tired to explain anything and doesn’t think Izuna will take it without an argument. I can’t believe THIS goon is conflict-avoidant! I mean I can because I wrote him but


	35. Chapter 35

The following week Mito receives a letter from her father. She calls a council meeting, and requests that Tobirama be there. It becomes apparent why when she reads it out loud:

 _I believe that your cousin and I have made some progress toward getting the great turtle to speak to us. It accepted our offering last night, and I am assembling a delegation to find and persuade it. Please ask your brother-in-law if he is willing to help us; he is the only one to have successfully negotiated with a bijuu_.

Tobirama wouldn’t put it like that. After all, Nara Shikaten is on very good terms with Matatabi. But Ashina isn’t the first person to ask him for help talking to a bijuu—he has introduced many residents of Nekomamora to their patron. He is well used to being considered an expert.

_If you are able to come, we would be honored to receive you, though we understand how important your position is. Please come with all haste, or send Senju Tobirama._

Mito waits a minute to let that sink in, and then says, “Tobirama, unless you have a very good reason to the contrary I am ordering you to go to the Isle of Whirlpools. I myself will not be able to go.” Some tension is released in the room at that assurance. “You may bring anyone you believe will be helpful to you, or anyone who wishes to make diplomatic contacts on the Isle, as long as they do not significantly slow you down.”

“I will leave immediately if you wish it, Hokage-sama,” he says. “I should be able to get there within five days.”

His plans are somewhat foiled by the inclusion of delegates from the Aburame, Akimichi, and Hyuuga clans who insist that they need more time to pack, as well as Izuna’s delighted declaration that he will come as the Uchiha delegate and bring his nieces. “They need to see the world,” he says. “How will they become great if they don’t have experience of other places? And who knows, maybe they’ll learn some diplomacy.”

The Hyuuga representative gives Ayumi and Jiori a scathing look but doesn’t comment as they set off. The pace is mild enough that Tobirama can easily carry Ayumi on his back for several hours before he lets her run beside him for one to improve her stamina. It takes seven days to get there, during which Izuna’s nieces complain more and more about not having proper beds. Even Tobirama is glad to reach the coast, where a boat is waiting to take them the last half-day of the journey. To distract them, he challenges them to meditate until the boat makes land. Ayumi manages it, at least.

Before they can get down to business, it is only proper to settle the guests in their quarters and serve dinner. Tobirama _itches_. He tries to focus his attention on the rather lovely stone buildings characteristic of the Isle, but can’t quite stop himself from expanding his senses to follow Isobu’s rippling turquoise chakra where it patrols the seabed ten kilometers away. He doesn’t pay attention to the conversation at all until Izuna elbows him, breaking his concentration. “What?” he says sharply.

Izuna raises his eyebrows. “I was just going to ask if you had any Mito news to share. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all. I was watching Isobu.” At the blank looks he gets, he elaborates: “The three-tailed turtle. He’s about ten kilometers northeast of here.” Showing off _probably_ won’t bring him any closer to the actual negotiation, but one never knows.

“You can sense that far without a seal?” asks Ashina’s niece Botan. Another Uzumaki, sitting next to her, leans over to whisper to her neighbor, glancing as she does at Tobirama.

“ _Is_ there a seal for it?” Tobirama turns his attention entirely to the room where he sits. “Can you show it to me? How have _you_ been tracking him?”

Botan’s face seems to light up. “Uncle and I designed it together! I’d love to show it to you after dinner. How much do you know about sealing?”

“I was taught by Uzumaki Ume when I was younger,” he says, “but I’ve also studied extensively from scrolls. I have invented a few seals, myself, though they are mostly for use in battle.” Privately he considers martial sealing to be somewhat less elegant, because it’s almost always done very quickly and with little regard for form.

“You didn’t teach us about seals,” complains Jiori, leaning hard on his arm. “Why didn’t you teach us about seals?”

“I didn’t think you’d have the patience,” he tells her, “but if you want to prove me wrong, find a sealing master here on the Isle and learn the basics.”

“Jiori-chan _doesn’t_ have the patience,” says Ayumi in a loud whisper. “But _I_ do.”

Botan smiles at her and says, “Would you like to start your first lesson now?” The two of them nod, and she leans across the table to draw a simple storage seal in chakra on the wood. Tobirama misses the beginning of what she’s saying, distracted by the woman next to her, who rolls her eyes and slides some dishes away from where Botan’s elbow threatens them.

Dinner takes a long time, primarily because almost the entire table starts trying to teach Izuna’s nieces sealing—even Ashina, who is as dignified as any Uzumaki. The Hyuuga and Aburame delegates seem disgruntled about it, but don’t turn down the chance to ask questions of a family of sealing masters. Finally Tobirama manages to catch Botan’s eye, and Botan gets up to show him to a large chamber in a nearby building. Like many of the rooms in the village, it is large and round—Tobirama is beginning to think that they’re all designed to accommodate enormous seals if need be. The seal drawn on the floor of this room is about three meters across, but it’s not because they needed more space for detail. Yuu, the woman who was sitting next to Botan at dinner, mentioned that physically larger seals can hold more chakra, which is something Tobirama never considered before.

“Here it is,” says Botan happily. “It took about a month to design, even though it’s not all that complicated. It’s a permanent area effect seal with a pretty big range, and it’s linked to me and Uncle both, so it needs to be charged once a day. We actually had to invent a couple new seal components to get the tuning exactly right. You’d be surprised how a really distinctive chakra signature like the turtle’s can be difficult for a seal to sort out.”

“Are there no sensor specialists in your village?” asks Tobirama.

“A few, but none with a range as big as yours. We just don’t need that, since we have seals for it! How big _is_ your range, anyway?”

“I can almost see Nekomamora from here. I’m about forty kilometers too far away.”

“ _Wow._ And you _also_ invent seals? You’re quite a guy! Can I see one?”

“The one I use most often is hiraishin. It’s an instant transportation seal, a bit like self-summoning.”

“Lightning rod, huh? And lightning seal would be seeking the target… How did you link them?”

Tobirama loosens his shirt enough to shrug it off, turning his back to Botan to show her the seal.

“Oh, this is _wonderful_! It must have taken you a while to come up with, though.”

“Almost a year,” he acknowledges, doing up his shirt again. “I also modified it to send items to a target, and there are a few seals for use in battle that absorb chakra.”

“We’ll have to compare notes sometime,” says Botan, grinning. “Did you want me to explain the tracking seal?”

“Yes, I did.”


	36. Chapter 36

The next day Tobirama, Botan, and Ashina sail out to a small island in the north that doesn’t appear on any Uzumaki charts. It looks craggy and unwelcoming, and when it speaks it sounds very much the same.

“ **What do you want?** ” asks the turtle, barely raising his head from the water.

“Good morning, Isobu-san,” says Tobirama. “We are here to talk.”

“ **How do you know my name?** ” he rumbles.

“My friend Matatabi speaks of you sometimes. She is the patron of our village. I was called here to negotiate with you in the hope that you would wish to be a patron to the Uzumaki.”

“And the other clans on the Isle,” mumbles Botan. She’s staring up at Isobu’s single visible eye in awe.

“ **I wish you humans would just leave me alone,** ” says Isobu. “ **I _could_ kill you any time I want, you know. I could destroy your whole island.** ”

“But you do not,” says Ashina, “and for that we thank you. Certainly we will not press you into doing anything you find distasteful, but perhaps we could reach some kind of mutually beneficial agreement.”

“ **Hm. Thank you for the incense, I suppose. And the little statues. I ate them, but they were very nice. I don’t know what you could possibly give me that I really want, though.** ”

“Matatabi joined our village for the sake of curiosity,” says Tobirama. “She wanted to understand why so many humans were organizing together. I had almost nothing to do with it, in actuality. But curiosity isn’t what motivates you.”

“ **No.** ”

“What _do_ you do all day?” asks Botan. “Most of us humans work on sealing or making things.”

Isobu’s red eye turns to her. “ **I watch the ocean.** ” There is a long pause, during which Botan continues to look up at him expectantly. “ **…I find beauty on the seafloor.** ”

“That’s amazing! I wish I could breathe underwater. I bet it really is beautiful. Actually, Uncle, do you think I could create a seal for that?”

Ashina looks bemused. He, like Tobirama, probably thinks that a negotiation with a turtle god is not the time to be thinking of seals for breathing underwater. “My dear niece, I’m sure you could create any seal you set your mind to.”

“Then, Isobu-sama, could I come with you some time?”

If Isobu had a human face, Tobirama is sure he would be wearing the same expression as Ashina. “ **I suppose you could. I won’t bother to stop you.** ” His eye closes and his head sinks under the surface of the water. “ **Now go away,** ” he says.

They go away.

With Tobirama’s help—as an expert in water, though he’s far from the only one on the isle—Botan designs her seal in under a week. Ashina insists that Tobirama go with her when she goes to find Isobu again, but he isn’t at all necessary. He ends up sitting on the surface of the water for two hours, meditating and watching her chakra signature hundreds of meters below. At times she becomes hard to distinguish from Isobu, her chakra mingling with his and both of them with the millions of tiny lives in the sea.

When she comes up at last, Isobu isn’t with her. She’s grinning, awed and a little unfocused—Hashirama would say she has stars in her eyes. She climbs onto the surface of the water, dripping, and says, “The _ocean_ , Tobirama-san. It’s _incredible_! There’s so many things I’ve _never ever_ seen before. Next time I must figure out how to make sketches down there. Come on, come on, we’ve got to get home so I can draw everything before I forget. There are these _huge_ forests of kelp—oh, it’s amazing when it’s underwater like it’s supposed to be! And such fish—” She still hasn’t stopped talking by the time they return to the boat, and she keeps it up even as she’s drawing feverishly on a borrowed scroll. It makes Tobirama want to see what’s down at the bottom of the sea with his own eyes.

He doesn’t, though. It’s not long before he decides Botan has negotiations—such as they are—well in hand, and returns to Nekomamora. Perhaps a month later they receive news that the Uzumaki have permanently allied themselves with the two other clans of the Isle and formed a village they name Kamemamora. Mito, her husbands, and delegates from every clan in Nekomamora go to visit the new village for a few days to celebrate, and Tobirama finds himself acting as Hokage in her absence. He is _very_ glad when she returns, because even without taking on her job he has enough responsibilities; half of the shinobi under his command want ninjutsu advice, and bewilderingly he keeps getting invitations to tea from people he scarcely knows. The one good thing about his workload is that he has a good excuse not to go to tea with strangers.

Izuna hosts dinners at their house often enough, as if he’s trying to train Tobirama to be sociable. It’s a qualified success, if only because Izuna picks his guests very carefully. Most of them are well-spoken and interested in politics and chakra theory. When Izuna wants to have _fun_ , on the other hand, he goes out drinking. Tobirama is happy to be well out of it. Sometimes he takes his cousins with him, and Tobirama is left to watch Ayumi and Jiori. On one occasion the two of them host a party while their parents are out, and Tobirama is made to do party tricks for a dozen children between the ages of six and eleven. They are all very impressed, but he goes to bed with a headache from their loud voices.

And so he works. And so he slowly learns humanity, even if he doesn’t always practice it. Autumn turns colder; he finds civilians warming themselves at Matatabi’s hearth. Winter comes, and with it five minor clans wanting protection from the uncertainty it brings. In the spring he is eighteen years old, and they learn that another protected village has been founded, in Cliff Country. There’s diplomacy and defense planning to be done.

And so he works.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter of the story! Tune in next week for the sloppily-done epilogue ::)


	37. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place three years after the last chapter.  
> Also!! Everyone thanks so much for reading and liking this and posting dumb silly comments and insightful comments! I love you all!!

“Well? How’d it go, sensei?”

“Can a man not sit down to eat in his own home?”

“Not till he tells me how the summit went! Do I have to go tell Haruhi-chan and Yuuki-kun to come bother you too?”

Tobirama sighs and glances sideways at his niece. “I’d prefer if you didn’t, but your threats are still much too unsubtle.”

“It’s not necessary to use poison when a sword will do,” says Ayumi, wearing a guileless expression. He can’t fault her logic, so he accedes with a curt nod.

“It went well. I can’t gauge how faithfully the other rulers will keep their portions of the treaty, but Mito seems confident in them. They were surprisingly reasonable, actually.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want to have to fight them.”

“You _wouldn’t_ be fighting, even if there were a war. You’re thirteen, and you know that the age limit to enter the regular shinobi forces is fifteen. I don’t know why you would imply otherwise.”

Ayumi pushes her lips out and twists her mouth, possibly indicating impatience. “It was a joke, Uncle. Good to see you still don’t understand them. Hey, if I ever need to tell the difference between the real you and someone who’s transformed into you, I can just tell a joke, and kill the one that actually laughs.”

“Where’s your sister, Ayumi,” he says wearily.

“I dunno, I’m not the boss of her. She’s probably at Mata-sama’s. I’m going out, do you want anything?”

“Just peace and quiet. I don’t know why you were waiting here. You don’t even live here.”

“Ambush, obviously! I needed to collect the latest gossip!” she calls over her shoulder as she slides the door shut.

He enjoys only half an hour of peace and quiet, with Makurama settled on his lap and Nikkouma by his side, before Izuna comes home. Izuna’s chakra lights up sky blue when he sees Tobirama has returned and he drapes himself over Tobirama’s back, resting his chin on Tobirama’s shoulder to look at what he was writing. “Since you’re doing normal clerical work instead of troop distributions,” he says, “I’m going to assume the summit was all right.”

Tobirama sets his brush down and runs his fingers through Izuna’s hair, not turning to look at him. “We won’t have any trouble from protected countries we share borders with. They’re not arrogant enough to think that their patrons would participate in an attack on another village. I’m most worried about Saru. Their patron _might_ actually go into battle.”

“I hope he has an awful time of it. Matatabi-sama wouldn’t be pleased, certainly, and I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of her, even if I were a bijuu.”

“Hmm.” Tobirama uses his free hand to scratch Makurama behind the ears. He purrs very loudly, and not for the first time Tobirama thinks of how much his chakra feels like Izuna’s right now. All they want is to be petted, the both of them. “In any case, I shouldn’t sit here too long. As soon as they hear I’m back in Neko people will be looking for me.” It’s both gratifying and irritating how many people want his advice, and since he has fresh news it will be even worse.

“Take _one_ day off, Tobirama. You won’t die.”

“I don’t mind working, so I have to conclude you say this for selfish reasons.”

“Ugh.” Izuna pulls Tobirama back by the shoulders until his head rests in Izuna’s lap. “Yes, I’m selfish. So what. I hardly see you when you’re not sleeping.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Tobirama tells him. “And you could always come to my team’s training sessions.”

“You say that like I don’t have my own team to train. Hey, maybe we could make them fight each other!”

That was indeed what Tobirama was implying. He says nothing, just closes his eyes and waits for Izuna to get bored enough with silence to start talking.

 

Somewhat before sunset, Mito’s nurse Hibata returns with the twins. Though they’re sleepy, they still insist on sitting with Izuna. He’s their primary caretaker, as the only member of the household without a job essential to the security of the village, and they adore him.

“Ijuuuu,” says Doron, reaching up to him. He smiles at her and offers his finger for her to grab, while Hizushi starts climbing onto his lap. They both fall asleep almost as soon as Izuna starts quietly singing: a song the older children made up to remember the village patrons. The way he smiles down at his niece and nephew turns his chakra into a hearth that radiates warmth.

Hashirama bursts in some time later, already talking loudly, but cuts himself off halfway through a sentence when he sees his children sleeping on Izuna. “Sorry!” he whispers as he tiptoes over to stroke a careful hand over Hizushi’s head. Behind him in the doorway, Madara and Mito are still taking their shoes off. “I didn’t think they’d be this worn out! And you, Brother, you were trying to ditch me on purpose, weren’t you? You abandoned Mito before she could ever get to lunch, just so I couldn’t see my dear brother.”

Tobirama shrugs, and Hashirama pinches his cheek in lieu of punching him, which would be too loud. “I wanted to rest at home. Ayumi wouldn’t have it, of course.”

“She’s very persistent, isn’t she?” says Madara. He sounds prouder than necessary of his niece’s ability to be obnoxious, as if she inherited it from him. Probably, somehow, she did.

“Very. Should I start making dinner?”

“We’re going out again!” says Hashirama brightly. Madara looks about as thrilled as Tobirama feels. “Once our _beautiful babies_ wake up. Tsumiki’s family will be coming, and I’ve asked Touka and Yuuho to join us too. And Hibata-san, of course!”

Doron and Hizushi wake an hour later, after everyone else has changed into better clothes for going out. They’re excited to eat fancy food, because everyone in the Uzumaki household cooks very plainly. Tobirama walks with Izuna’s hand in his, and Hashirama’s arm around his shoulder. It’s probably not because they’re afraid of him getting away, he thinks. More likely, they want him to know that they love him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final cat count: 77  
> 1: Koima (bad at fishing)  
> 2: Mizoma (loves to roll around in ditches)  
> 3-16: Nyashi clan ninja cats  
> 17: Uchiha Izuna  
> 18: Nibi no Matatabi  
> 19: Nikkouma (likes to bask in the sunshine)  
> 20: Nyahou clan delegate  
> 21-73: shrine cats and those who live with Matatabi  
> 74: Isuma (hides under furniture)  
> 75: Hatama (likes hunting far away)  
> 76: Makurama (will sit on anything that stays still for 30 seconds)  
> 77: Kuima (usually found walking along fences)  
> Bonus 78th cat: Senju Tobirama


End file.
